Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is utilizing a 1115 Medicaid waiver “to redesign Alaska’s behavioral health system,” according to a commentary that appeared Aug. 22 in the ADN.
Alaska has a 60-year history of promises and programs that failed the disabled, especially acute care psychiatric patients. The disabled are being asked to take one more ride in a DeLorean back to the future.
Here is why Alaska has failed to properly care for acute care psychiatric patients: Patients and advocates are rarely included in determining new directions. For the most part, new programs are determined by the go-home-at-five crowd and providers who tend to make a lot of money on a permanent disabled class unable to complain.
Here is the reality: Alaska can not do without a larger acute care psychiatric facility. Psychiatric units in hospitals, as a general rule, are not set up to properly care for acute care psychiatric patients, but they are being encouraged to do so by the Division of Behavioral Health. In my opinion, for the best outcome for psychiatric patients, we must improve overall patient rights past the standards of the 1940s.
— Faith Myers
Anchorage
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