Summit 2001

Financing for Positive Results
March 21-24, 2001
Purchasing Quality and Outcomes in Behavioral Healthcare

Pamela S. Hyde, JD, Program Chair
Leighton Y. Huey, M.D. , Co-Chair

Overview

The Santa Fe Summit, held on March 22-24, 2001, was the fifth in a series of annual summits that began in 1997. This year's Summit was also the second in a two-year Summit process focusing on Education and Training last year and Financing for Positive Results this year. Attendees discussed methods for addressing the decreasing resources available for public mental health and substance abuse services and the increasing requirement that the limited dollars available be spent on those services and interventions that have been proven to work. Ten consumer and family administrators attended this year's conference, some for the first time.

Keynote speeches by Ron Manderscheid, PhD from CMHS, Eric Goplerud, PhD from SAMHSA, Mary Jane England, MD from the Washington Business Group on Health, and Jim Bixler, MSA, a substance abuse financing consultant from Illinois set the stage with information and challenging questions on Issues affecting public financing of services. Following the keynotes, seven dialogue groups led by national leaders from around the country met to discuss critical questions such as what financing mechanisms work best to assure quality care, how to fund services that are promising but not yet evidenced based, and what is the role of consumer and family-operated services in a system funded to produce positive results.

On the second day of the Summit these dialogue groups attempted to sell their ideas in a rousing "Marketplace of Ideas" designed to raise critical issues about the process of financing public services and the process of determining priorities for funding when public dollars are limited. Charles Ray, MEd (CEO of NCCBH), Ting Mintz (a.consumer administrator from Connecticut) and H.G. Whittington, MD ("living legend") provided comments as roving reporters followed by further refinement of the ideas that emerged as potential promising efforts for the field. ACMHA members and Summit participants discussed a number of action steps for ACMHA to consider to move issues raised in the Summit forward in the field, including:

• development of a new model for determining the value added of services purchased by public payers;

• a survey of key MH/SA leaders and systems to determine financing mechanisms most promising for assuring quality and creation of case studies about these mechanisms;

• development of a "white paper" about network financing rather than unit or program financing;

• a call to action and action plan for increasing the percentage of consumer and family-operated services funded by public systems; and

• support for a multi-institutional collaborative to fundamentally change pre-professional university training.

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Presentations [PDF 117k]:
History and Headlines
Use the Power of Purchasing to Get What You Want
Consumer/Family Services
Financing Evidence-Based Practices
Ideas to Make Promising Practices Proven to Gain Funding
Fixing Unmet Needs: Beyond the Community Reinvestment Approach
New Cost/Value Paradism
Dirty Dozen" Ideas

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