NJAMHAA News Spring 2021

spring 2021 10 showcase hospital-community partnerships and their positive impact, and to encourage other providers to collaborate in similar ways. Currently, the group is concentrating on advocacy for aligned financial incentives in the state’s upcoming Quality Improvement Program (QIP), which will focus on maternal health and behavioral health outcomes. The HCIC recently held a virtual forum to explain the QIP to community providers and encourage them to partner with hospitals in this initiative, which the state plans to launch on July 1, 2021. Meeting the Needs of Various Service Providers Some groups had been individual entities that benefited from the structure and resources NJAMHAA provides. One of these groups is the Mental Health Emergency Services Association (MHESA). “It’s an incredibly powerful tool. It brings together all the elements of screening from around the state with NJAMHAA staff to talk about vital issues that need to be addressed. It’s really indispensable,” said Al Bassetti, MA, LPC, Director, Employee Assistance Program and Emergency Services at Hunterdon Medical Center and current Chair of MHESA. “It gave me the ability to poll the wisdom of a group and come to a consensus on what had to be done from a practical standpoint, and present that to the state in a coherent manner that had the weight of all providers together,” he added. Bassetti has been involved with NJAMHAA for about 23 years, which is as long as he’s been at Hunterdon Medical Center. “We would not be where we are without NJAMHAA’s support,” he stated. NJAMHAA and MHESA recently began holding calls every two weeks to discuss how all the screeners are doing concerning the pandemic and personal protective equipment, and this regular communication will continue. One of the most important achievements was expansion of screening centers to conduct mobile outreach about 15 years ago. More recent accomplishments are related to telepsychiatry. “NJAMHAA wrestled with this incredibly complex issue and helped the bureaucracy wrap their arms around it, leading to implementation and protection of patients’ rights,” Bassetti said. Another independent group that asked to be part of NJAMHAA was the New Jersey Association of Integrated Case Management (NJAICM). Angela Romano Lucky, who worked at Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of Newark at the time and was President of NJAICM, shared that the group decided to become a NJAMHAA Practice Group to benefit from the staff ’s support for advocacy and conferences for the Integrated Case Management Services (ICMS) providers. “The core group was together for years. We supported each other, the conferences were very successful, and it was extremely helpful to have NJAMHAA’s event planner attend our meetings and share with DebraWentz the advocacy needs we identified,” Romano Lucky said. Although this group was absorbed by the Adult Mental Health Group, it was reinstated in 2020 due to popular demand. In fact, the ICMS and Programs for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) Practice Groups were reactivated because these providers “wanted to discuss issues in the context of the work they do in their programs specifically, and we were happy to accommodate them,” Dr. Wentz said. The current ICMS Practice Group is chaired by Anna Kline, MAE, Director, Integrated Case Management & Justice Involved Services, Preferred Behavioral Health Group, who chaired the original group for several years. “This group has been successful for nearly two decades, in advocating for needed resources, case management competency training, funding, protocols, standardized procedures, and legislation,” Kline said. In fact, the current group is developing recommendations for the program regulations and is exploring the possibility of holding conferences again. The ICMS Practice Group has been successful in advocating for needed training, funding, protocols, standardized procedures, and legislation. Anna Kline, MAE, Director, Integrated Case Management Services (ICMS) & Justice Involved Services, Preferred Behavioral Health Group and Chair of the ICMS Practice Group NJAMHAA and its Members Gain [continued from page 9]