By Daniel Stefanski |
Two Arizona legislators are proposing changes to the state’s hospital.
Last week, Senators Catherine Miranda and T.J. Shope wrote an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic with their legislative recommendations to improve the Arizona State Hospital over the next session.
The bipartisan duo revealed that their thoughts stem from concerns “about shortcomings in Arizona’s behavioral health system, especially the system of care for folks with a serious mental illness.” There were three areas that the lawmakers identified for change, which were “better oversight and governance of the Arizona State Hospital, improved community reintegration resources, and more secure residential treatment options.”
In their article, Miranda and Shope telegraphed their legislative proposals for all three areas. For ‘oversight,’ the two made the case that the setup for the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) running and regulating the state hospital is “flawed, and that the Legislature should split up the two to improve the oversight and care for patients. The senators hope to make this happen by ensuring that “the superintendent of the facility would report to an independent, appointed governing body composed of people with experience overseeing complex psychiatric facilities.”
For ‘reintegration,’ Miranda and Shope proposed the development of “a small ‘community reintegration’ unit to serve as a transitional unit for patients who are approaching discharge from the state hospital but who still need structured care.” This proposal was already identified as a “critical gap” by the state’s hospital in its Clinical Improvement Plan.
For ‘facilities,’ Miranda and Shope discussed the need for “persons with serious mental illnesses” to have “safe places to receive treatment with more structure and better qualified staff than are available in existing residential behavioral health group homes.” The senators asserted that former-Governor Doug Ducey’s final budget “included funds to build three such secure residential treatment facilities, including funding to staff them,” but that “those funds were swept out of the current budget.”
Senators Miranda and Shope won’t have to wait long to start the engine on their recommendations to change the Arizona State Hospital with the first day of the new legislative session around two months away.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
