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[ Index ]
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California Psychiatric Association
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| NOTE: This document outlines the legislative priorities of CPA. They are not necessarily in specific order of priority, as changing events change the need to dedicate time and resources to different issues. |
Quality of Care. Advocate for patients to receive the highest quality of care. Promote evidence based standards for care and services. Advocate best practices and promote the utilization of nationally recognized professional treatment guidelines. Promote the establishment of performance measures to ensure accountability.
Access to Competent Medical Care. Promote uniform standards of medical education to ensure the safe and competent medical treatment of mental illness. Ensure access to competent medical care for all Californians by increasing psychiatric residency training slots, increasing access to telepsychiatry, expanding efforts to train and support primary care physicians, and supporting efforts to increase the numbers of psychiatric specialist nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Work to establish fee schedules and adequate levels of reimbursement which promote physician participation in public and private service delivery programs. Work to establish effective incentives at the state or local level to encourage providers to work in underserved areas.
Non-discriminatory Insurance Coverage for Mental Illnesses. Work to ensure true parity of access to competent psychiatric and substance abuse care in both public and private managed care settings. Work to create a managed care environment that is patient and physician friendly. Work to reduce the regulatory burdens imposed on patients and physicians by managed care practices.
Access to Medications. Promote full access to safe and effective medications provided by competent medically trained personnel such as physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Support the right of patients to have access to the medications recommended by their physician. Support the right of physicians to prescribe the most efficacious medications for their patients. Advocate for means to insure that consumers have access to economical medications. Work to improve access to modern psychiatric medications in the public mental health system and jails and prisons. Advocate for physician involvement in the development of appropriate medication algorithms and protocols.
Services for Children and Adolescents. Work to increase collaboration between State and county level departments of mental health, social services, probation, educational institutions, and regional centers. Ensure that funding for children’s services is preserved or expanded, and that the process of access to funding sources is streamlined. Increase access to local systems of care for children placed out of county. Seek to promote early diagnosis and treatment for all children, including foster children.
Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act - MICRA. Protect the integrity of the California medical malpractice law in order to assure that physician resources are directed to providing medical care and not to prohibitively high insurance premiums.
De-Criminalize the Mentally Ill. Advocate for adequate funding for the public mental health system so that un-treated and under-treated individuals with mental illness do not by default end up in jails and prisons. Support programs that divert those who would not have committed crimes except for their illness from the criminal justice system into treatment. Advocate for adequate psychiatric care for mentally ill prisoners and detainees of the juvenile justice system, including modern medication. Assure that the severely mentally ill and sexual predators are separated in facilities and that medical disorders are not confused with anti-social behavior. Encourage police training on the subject of mental illness.
Violence Prevention. Support legislation that embodies reasoned regulatory action relating to violence. Support legislation that discourages the purchase of handguns and places strong controls on availability of all types of firearms to private citizens. CPA’s focus on domestic violence acknowledges the negative psychiatric impacts of domestic violence and positive impacts of domestic violence prevention. Focus on prevention of school violence through removing disincentives to the identification and treatment of severely emotionally disturbed children who may potentially be violent.
Substance and Alcohol Abuse. Work to increase access to and improve the quality of treatment provided to persons with a serious mental illness who also have a co-occurring substance abuse disorder. Work to decrease funding silos which isolate mental health and substance abuse treatment. Work to promote and increase funding for integrated treatment programs.
Public Mental Health System/including foster children. Assure the integrity of, and adequate funding for, the public mental health system, including funding for medical treatment and full utilization of the skills of psychiatrists as physicians. Continue to support and advocate for AB 34/AB 2034 homeless mentally ill outreach programs. Support full implementation of AB 1421 programs for assisted outpatient treatment. Advocate for mentally ill offender treatment programs. Assure that all programs measure performance and obtain good outcome evaluations.
Community Housing. Support the development of affordable, appropriate housing in the community for those with mental disorders. Advocate for supported housing and the appropriate provision of community based, comprehensive care that allows treatment in the community and in homes.
Suicide. Work actively with other organizations to significantly reduce the rate of suicide by promoting treatment for mental disorders, creating awareness in the legislature and public that suicide is a preventable public health issue, coordinating state and local government agencies, and advocating in support of suicide prevention policies.
Seclusion and Restraint. Work with other organizations to improve the laws and practices governing seclusion and restraint to assure patient and staff safety.
Psychiatric Leadership. Work to insure institutional support for medical and psychiatric leadership in all health care systems in which mental illness is addressed.
Hospital Bed Shortages. Work towards the amelioration of the shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds. Work to ameliorate the lack of adequate capacity in the existing mental health system to provide alternative care for those patients with more severe and urgent needs for care. Work to provide capacity in county of residence, particularly for children and adolescents.
Confidentiality and Patient Privacy. Information contained in medical records is highly sensitive material. Work to ensure protections for patient confidentiality, so that personal information is not inappropriately disclosed. Work to ensure that legitimate purposes for access do not include personal information when aggregate, i.e. non -personally identifiable information would suffice. Work to educate policy makers and the public that confidentiality of medical information is prerequisite to high quality medical care.
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