My next rant is Indianas care for those who struggle with some form of mental illness, at least as I have experienced it in the Ft. Wayne area. The bottom line is if we would allocate more money for case workers who can have a personal relationship with individual we would save many dollars for every dollar we spend. I cant be more specific because I have not seen an actual cost saving analysis but my personal experiences show it to be true. I have found we are quick to prescribe medication but less equipped to provide person to person help. My personal experience has been through several friends. One friend I met at my church has become a good friend. I voluntarily became his guardian for practical reasons to help him but his mismanagement because of improperly allocated resources is the point of this story. This friend was shuffling and drooling when I first met him because he was on such a heavy dose of medication. As I got to know him he is a brilliant man with a great personality, when he is not over-medicated. During the early years of getting to know him he was involuntarily placed in a psych unit several times a year and at least once or twice a year was shipped off to state facilities in Richmond or Logansport. I had the opportunity to review the costs associated with his care and we were spending over $100,000 per year and often much more depending on the number of hospitalizations. As I got to know him and began advocating for reductions in his medications and lessening of his restrictions we had ups and downs for a while but I began to get a glimpse of the man behind that medicated stupor. This caused me to more aggressively pursue alternative care for him to allow reduction of medication. Unfortunately, I learned the case workers are so overworked they do not have the time to actually provide the one on one care which they actually believed they would be doing when they became case workers. Fast forward, for well over the last two years (maybe three) my friend has had zero hospitalizations, is on a very low dose of medication, lives alone, drives, and all around has a decent life he can enjoy: and, we are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we would allocate some of those savings to hire a few more case workers and let them actually get involved in the life of the person they are assigned we could allocate even more money to do the right thing and still pay taxpayer money. I am confident this would also bring greater job satisfaction for the people who work in the mental health services; and, thereby, improve the care they provide. A win-win-win-win etc. All by allocating tax dollars in a way that actually does the right thing and saving money to boot. So, many of you have similar stories where you have seen tax money being spent in the wrong way and actually hurts rather than helps. Please share your story. Combined we may see patterns and be better able to propose positive changes.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 01:00:46 +0000
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