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Malory Shaughnessy is the executive director of the Alliance for Addiction and Mental Health Services. Betsy Sweet is senior advocate with the Behavioral Health Community Collaborative. Katie Fullam Harris is the chief government affairs officer of MaineHealth.
At the end of June, the Mills administration began issuing one-time payments to Maine behavioral health providers totaling $36.8 million in state and federal funds as part of the bipartisan supplemental budget passed by the Legislature. These payments could not have come at a more critical time.
Earlier this year, hospitals, behavioral health providers, health care workers and people with lived experience sounded an alarm: the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with more than a decade of neglect left our behavioral health system in crisis. And those services that remained of our fragmented system were insufficient to meet the needs of our most vulnerable residents.
At the height of the crisis, one-third of MaineHealth’s emergency department beds were filled with behavioral health patients awaiting access to appropriate levels of care. Patients regularly languished for days — some for weeks and even months — in our emergency departments because the services they desperately needed had months-long waiting lists — or worse — the service was not available at all.
Not only did the system fail these patients and their families but also our health care heroes — once celebrated at the onset of the pandemic — who literally bore the brunt of the system’s failings as they experienced unprecedented levels of physical and verbal abuse, though it is important to point out that the vast majority of people with behavioral health needs are not violent.
The Legislature and the Mills administration recognized the pandemic’s toll in this arena, and they made an historic investment to help stabilize the behavioral health system. Just as importantly, the administration worked in collaboration with providers to develop a plan to distribute the targeted relief funds quickly. These funds have done what they were intended to do — stem the bleeding and stabilize a system in crisis.
To be clear, however, the relief funds have only patched a problem that took more than a decade to create. It has not been fixed. People with behavioral health needs, and particularly children, continue to languish in our ERs for days and weeks. There are still long waiting lists and insufficient access to home and community services. And our care team members are still experiencing unacceptable levels of violence on a daily basis. Though the magnitude of the crisis has stabilized, the underlying gaps in the system persist.
Rebuilding a system in shambles will require further investments and collaboration to fill gaps in care and advance structural reforms that will ensure the financial stability of the community-based behavioral health system. A comprehensive plan is needed to identify where investments should be targeted to support the needs of our communities — whether you live in Fort Kent, Eastport or Biddeford.