Financing Health Care: Understanding Medicaid

SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) and other agencies offer many resources to help mental health service providers learn about Medicaid:

• Invitational Conference on Medicaid and Mental Health Services. Cosponsored by SAMHSA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), this annual invitation-only event brings together state Medicaid and mental health departments.

• Technical assistance papers. The Medicaid subcommittee of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health urged CMHS to provide more technical assistance to states. CMHS is now working with CMS to develop papers clarifying policies and highlighting promising practices. The first, "Psychotropic Medications: Addressing Costs without Restricting Access," is available at www.cms.hhs.gov/
  promisingpractices/psychotropicmeds.pdf.

• Data. CMHS gathers and analyzes data on Medicaid and mental health. See www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/
  cmhs.

Other organizations also offer:

• In-depth Medicaid information from CMS at
  www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaid/default.asp.

• The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill offers a comprehensive publication called Medicaid Facts: What You Need to Know at www.nami.org/Content/
  NavigationMenu/Inform_Yourself/
  About_Public_Policy/Policy_Research_Institute/
  NAMI-Medicaid_Facts.pdf. The publication includes fact sheets, a glossary, and a bibliography.