While many of us were sleeping last night, the lines in Arizona's mental health battle were etched deeper into the sand. At issue are the number of patients being un- or under- served by the state's partially privatized system, particularly in Maricopa County. At midnight, the Arizona Republic published a story appearing today, "Audit calls county's mental care worse." Based on an analysis by court-appointed monitor Nancy Diggs, Magellan Health Services, the company which won the contract in 2007 to manage mental health services in Maricopa County, has failed to meet the needs of 83% of the county's most seriously ill clients. If that weren't damning enough, the report also found three in five patients do not have "an adequate clinical team" and four in five don't even have a completed mental health assessment.
"They've really gone to hell in a handbasket."
Nancy Diggs, court-appointed monitor.
Magellan won their contract promising to clean up the mess left by their predecessor, Value Options .
Among the lightning rods for the current controversy is the case of Joe Gallegos, a longtime mental health client who had been court-ordered into treatment at a Glendale, Arizona clinic. He didn't receive help from Magellan and on December 23, murdered two young boys in a Southwest Phoenix park, beating them to death with a baseball bat.
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