During their regular session on Wednesday, the Summit County Council devoted the most time to hearing from two vendors competing to be the new provider for the county’s Mental Health and Substance Abuse contract.
After 20 years, the county’s contract with Valley Behavioral Health is due to expire by this fall.
County Council Member Doug Clyde said that last year, the county put together an advisory committee composed of staffers, professionals and citizens. The group put out an RFP and narrowed the candidates down to two, who made presentations to the Council on Wednesday.
The contenders are the University of Utah Health Care Network; and Optum, which is associated with UnitedHealth Care and has been the vendor for Salt Lake County for about 8 years.
Clyde said the most fundamental change for the county is that they are moving from a staffing model of service to a network model.
“The staff model is one where the provider hires specific staff,” Clyde explained. “And those people populate certain buildings and certain locations and do discrete functions. The network model is more like you are going to the network of physicians or providers that your insurance company allows you to go to. That is to say it will involve a broad spectrum of network providers to—of course will see other patients. They’re not just dedicated to seeing the patients that we’re tasked with serving.”
He said the contract is intended to serve the uninsured, or those who are on Medicaid. Clyde said the hope with the new model is to provide more flexible service with a faster response time.
“One of the anecdotal bits of testimony that we received last night was that currently, I think people can experience delays of as much as 100 to 150 days to get to a provider to have their medicine adjusted,” Clyde continued. “For example, if they happen to be on medication for behavioral issues, it can take that long for them to get to a provider. And that obviously is unacceptable. These are people who are in immediate need of care. So, again by going to a network system, it means that at any given time, they perhaps have dozens of or more providers that they could potentially get service from.”
He said the funding for the contract isn’t based in the county.
“It’s a complex federally-mandated program that requires—that will be funded by both federal and state government,” Clyde said. “That requires the provider that we’re going to choose to apply for and secure the funding that they need to provide the services.”
Clyde said it’s a complicated issue, and the background materials come to nearly 600 pages. He detailed some of the issues they need to resolve.
”Who are the local providers going to be,” Clyde asked? “That was one of the items that the committee highlighted as being something that they were—that was one of their key decision factors. Other issues have to do with, what is their overall staffing and competency that they bring to the picture. Both providers appear to be very competent.”
The vendor, whoever is selected, also has to make an effective transition from the Valley organization.
“And some of this network of providers will be people that will actually now set up shop in Summit County,” Clyde explained. “They may not have a presence here now. That’s one of the variabilities between the two proposals. Some of them have more presence than others. But that is all subject to change because these people,when they get the contract award, then they will go out and contract with various providers, some of which will be new to the area, some of which will be existing. But then they have to figure out, ok, how do we transition from the existing provider network to these new providers.”
Clyde also said they will look closely at the recommendation they get from their Advisory Committee. The decision could come to the Council for their next session on April 17th, or the 24th.
