Massachusetts Insurer To Question Mental Health Patients About Personal Lives

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts in 2007 plans to begin requesting mental health patients to fill out questionnaires “designed to gauge a patient’s state of mind,” the Boston Globe reports. Patients will receive questionnaires after every eight counseling sessions or more often if the insurer decides they are warranted. The surveys will ask 58 questions about patients’ lives, including their sex lives, sleep patterns, suicidal thoughts and substance use problems. BCBS said the forms will allow it to monitor progress in patients’ mental health and assess the quality of care provided. BCBS currently requires mental health professionals to file reports on patients’ progress. The surveys also will identify patients who might benefit from more intensive therapy, though they will not be used to deny coverage, BCBS said. The questionnaires are optional for patients, “but if large numbers of a doctor’s or therapist’s patients don’t return the assessments, the practitioner could fail to qualify for annual increases in Blue Cross reimbursement,” the Globe reports. Jeffrey Simmons, BCBS’ medical director for behavior health, said the questionnaire is the insurer’s effort to “undertake a way to measure how people are progressing.” Massachusetts Psychiatric Society President-Elect Eugene Fierman said, “We are skeptical that any measures they are going to do will be truly meaningful. In general medicine you can measure deaths in surgery and adverse outcomes. It’s very difficult to do that in mental health” (Rowland, Boston Globe, 11/11). Barbara Martin

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Also Read