The economy is capturing the headlines lately and has been a topic of our strategic planning as well.  We have been looking at where we see the economic downturn impacting our clients and what they are doing about it.   We recently had an executive symposium with the CEOs of our Florida clients (one of the worst hit states) to see how they were handling state budget cuts, and I just returned from California where I attended the SATVA member’s meeting where the economy was a topic of interest. 

The result of these discussions is a dichotomy.  On the one hand, the states are looking at huge budget deficits (approximately $50B this year, with rumors of $100B next year).  On the other, Medicaid dependent providers typically weather a downturn better than non-Medicaid providers.   Some states are raising eligibility requirements to try to manage their costs, but at the same time the Congress is working on a stimulus package that is rumored to contain an increase in the federal share of Medicaid dollars to pump money into the states which should benefit behavioral and public health providers.

In our Florida discussions we saw that progressive providers were looking at ways to help their state (and themselves) through the budget crisis.  They talked about finding areas where the state was having problems (for example in the prison population where they offered to provide services directly in the prison versus having to move the prisoner into an inpatient unit).   Several of them were affiliating with primary care providers or FQHCs to provide a medical home to the consumer while at the same time being able to contract their staff to the FQHC to share costs.   It was encouraging to see the creative strategies being developed.

I am interested in hearing what your agency may be seeing and/or doing about the economy so that we can share your best practices with other clients.