The Senate Finance Committee (SFC) has released its mental health workforce discussion draft component of its mental health legislative package (a summary may be found here). We are pleased to report that 2 of the 3 provisions of the Improving Access to Mental Health Act are included in section 12 of the discussion draft. These provisions include allowing clinical social workers to provide Part B services to residents of skilled nursing facilities and allowing clinical social workers to bill for HBAI services. We are still reviewing the other provisions of the discussion draft and believe there may be other policies included that would represent positive policy changes for social workers.
The bill is getting press coverage: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2022/09/22/senate-looks-to-shore-up-mental-health-workforce-shortages-00058180
Recall that we have taken a lot of different actions to influence what provisions were included in the SFC bills, including the following letters. We also mobilized Chapters and members and got numerous organizations (LAC, MHLG, MHA and others) to write to SFC, in support of the Access bill and other proposals that will support social workers.
NASW’s letters:
Further, all 3 provisions of the Improving Access to Mental Health Act, are ALSO included in the Health Equity and Accountability Act (H.R. 7585/S. 4486).
This means that our bill provisions are included in at least two packages/other bills that have potential to advance in this congress. This advocacy has been a tremendous amount of collective effort (national office and Chapters) and we are finally seeing some real progress.