Nonprofits that deliver behavioral health services and families that use them joined several New Mexico lawmakers on Tuesday to challenge the notion that the shift to Arizona companies brought in by the Human Services Department will go smoothly.
Speakers at a news conference at Hogares in Albuquerque, which serves children and young adults, lashed out at the administration of Gov. Susana Martinez for what they said were takeovers, not transitions.
As of Tuesday, two of the state’s 15 biggest behavioral health providers are under new management, and more such shifts are in the works.
“What this is doing is essentially crushing all of those nonprofits,” said Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, who joined several other Democratic legislators in criticizing the Republican governor.
The 15 nonprofits were audited by a Boston-based company contracted by HSD, and state officials said the audit showed overbilling, mismanagement and possible fraud.
In late June, the Medicaid payments to all 15 for behavioral health services were suspended; only one nonprofit has had its behavioral health funding restored.
Speakers at the news conference said behavioral health clients and their families are worried.
“I am fearful as a parent, because this is a fragile system with fragile, fragile people, and we need to support them,” said Gay Finlayson of Albuquerque, whose schizophrenic 24-year-old son gets services from Hogares, one of the 15 audited.
Alfredo Lujan, clinical director at the Rio Rancho office of TeamBuilders, the biggest provider of services to children and families statewide, said the staff is anxious and the clients are unsure.
“They don’t know if they want to receive services from … strangers,” he said.
The Martinez administration says the Arizona providers that have taken over New Mexico nonprofits Southwest Counseling Center in Las Cruces and Pathways in Albuquerque – two of the 15 providers – have hired nearly all of the previous employees.
“There has been no interruption in services to consumers,” said HSD spokesman Matt Kennicott.
But HSD critics said some layoffs and service disruptions have occurred. In northern New Mexico, Santa Fe-based Easter Seals El Mirador has less than half its previous workforce of 130 still employed, according to spokeswoman Patsy Romero.
She said more than 60 workers who had been furloughed after Medicaid funds were frozen were laid off this week for lack of funding. They would be able to apply for jobs to the Arizona company that is designated to take over.
“There was no adequate notice of what we did wrong,” said Valerie Romero, a former worker who was just laid off from a program of Easter Seals El Mirador that provided one-on-one services to children. Freezing Medicaid money should have been “the last resort,” she said.
Maestas said less drastic remedies could have been pursued if there were problems with providers.
He called the developments a “power grab by the governor that smacks of cronyism and smacks of a political agenda.”
Asked for a response to Maestas’ comment, Martinez spokesman Enrique Knell said the governor “is standing up for those most in need by rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse being committed by the wealthy companies these shameless politicians are defending.”
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