Consultant says mental health agency leaks cash

By John Vlahovich
Spokane Public Radio

The agency overseeing Spokane County’s Medicaid mental health treatment services is bent, but not necessarily broken. That’s according to an accountant who recently studied the financially troubled Regional Support Network operation.

Dale Jarvis of MCPP Healthcare Consulting says his financial analysis of Spokane County’s RSN, as the agency is popularly called, found that between 1999 and 2005 it spent $3.5 million less on mental health services than it received in federal and state Medicaid reimbursement.

So what caused the agency to run a $2.6 million deficit last year? Jarvis said he found an apparent lack of knowledge of federal and state rules, and of financial planning within the RSN leadership.

Where the agency got into budgetary hot water was in its building-related spending, especially when it bought and renovated the new Community Services building on Spokane’s South Hill.

This and other problems have resulted in the RSN currently facing the possibility of losing future state Medicaid reimbursements, although legislative efforts to delay this are occurring in Olympia.

Jarvis says the RSN financial management system needs changing. Among other things, Jarvis says the RSN should gradually switch its mental health service providers to fee-for-service style payments. In other words, pay providers only for services they document as having provided to patients.