News-Record.com

Following up on the story from Thursday’s paper, folks at the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham LME said the state has judged them too harshly:

Managers with the public mental health agency that serves clients in Rockingham, Alamance and Caswell counties say they follow up with patients better than a stringent warning from state officials would indicate.

On Oct. 1, the Division of Mental Health put the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham Local Management Entity on notice that they could lose the funding and authority to coordinate care for their most seriously ill mental health consumers. The state said that 45 percent of those who left a mental hospital and returned home to those three counties received follow-up care.

That's below the state average and made the agency one of five across North Carolina at risk of losing their funding. But agency officials say that by their count, they outperform peers.

"We're at upwards of 65 percent," said Victor Armstrong, the agency's care coordination manager.

Click here for the whole thing.

It should be noted the state is not quite convinced:

"They have had conversations with our staff and they have talked about some of the things they think they are doing," said Leza Wainwright, co-director of the Division of Mental Health.

She was cautious in her appraisal, noting that even though there is information the state doesn’t have -- such as billing records for patients with private health insurance -- that information was missing for all patients in its study. That means the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham LME was compared to its peers based on the same set of information and its performance lacking relative to the 23 other agencies.

And some things the county may count as a follow-up service may not meet state standards. For example, Armstrong said the county has beefed up the staff that makes contact with patients coming home from the hospital.

This will bear watching in the new year.