House Bill 501, as introduced to the Florida legislature in 2019, looked to avail additional resources for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress, Military Sexual Trauma, Traumatic Brain Injury, and other service-related conditions and injuries. The law was also created to enhance coordination and communication between local veteran service organizations and service providers. It was an innovative response to the heterogeneous needs of Florida veterans, especially those suffering from mental health issues.
The act deals with the delivery of alternative treatment options for veterans and includes accompanying definitions of what that entails. It authorizes the Department of Veteran’s Affairs to collaborate with colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning in Florida to provide certain veterans with specific alternative treatment interventions (Florida Senate, 2019). The act provides:
- Eligibility criteria.
- Guidelines to follow during treatment.
- Requirements for treating organizations.
- Related assessment data.
These directives lay out the grounds to ensure optimal mental health treatment for veterans.
The bill creates statutes. 295.156 mandates that qualified veterans receive alternative treatment services when the need arises. The qualifications include a certification from the Department of Veteran Affairs as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (Florida Senate, 2019). The interventions are to be provided under the supervision and guidance of a licensed physician, clinical social worker, psychologist, nurse, chiropractic physician, mental health counselor, marriage and family therapist, or osteopathic physician.
The main strength of this piece of legislation is that it is forward-thinking and provides a way for veterans to access the latest evidence-based care. The medical field is evolving rapidly, and newer and better interventions are being developed with each passing day. As such, traditional approaches may not be as effective as initially thought. This is especially the case for veterans with mental health issues. The mental health needs of this subsection of patients need special attention because their problems are caused by exposure to very intense and highly stressful situations during deployment. As such, conventional therapies might not be as effective in addressing veterans’ problems, creating a need for innovation and collaboration between different entities. This act provides a way to provide this demographic with state-of-the-art interventions to maximize their outcomes.
One glaring weakness of this legislation is the additional costs, and overhead it creates, which can get in the way of the provision of quality services. The successful implementation of this act necessitates the allocation of more resources. Collaboration between the different entities, as laid out in the bill, means additional time and expenses to ensure the patient receives the care they need. Medical practitioners must spend more time coordinating with the different parties, prolonging care and incurring more costs.
Although they are unavoidable to a certain degree, overhead costs are often very expensive and deteriorate the quality of care provided. Over $190 billion is wasted annually in the United States to cater to excess administrative costs, which is very high even when distributed across all states (Himmelstein et al., 2020). This bill’s implementation means the State of Florida spends more on administration than previously.
The implementation of House Bill 501 has a significant impact on all stakeholders, both providers, and consumers. For providers like the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, this act means implementing an evolution of the traditional approach to providing mental health care to veterans. The legislation includes directives on responsibilities, requirements, and how the care process should be conducted, which adds to the considerations that must be made. Providers now have to adhere to a wider set of requirements to execute their work. Providers also have access to more expertise due to collaboration between different entities (Cushing & Braun, 2018).
Access to a wider pool of knowledge will facilitate the provision of the best care possible to ensure positive outcomes for veterans. This will allow providers to avail well-informed interventions because they can consult specialists and a larger panel of experts.
For consumers, the implementation of this act means access to better, more effective care. Veterans now stand to benefit from the latest advancements in mental health. Also, those that have undergone prior therapies now have access to alternative treatments to replace ineffective ones or supplement existing ones (Kilbourne et al., 2018). This bill means veterans can consult a wider array of professionals to coordinate to diagnose their issues and properly develop customized treatment plans. Thus, consumers emerge as the biggest beneficiaries of this law.
Florida’s 2019 House Bill 501 was created to ensure the best mental health outcomes for veterans in the state. This law mandates alternative treatment options for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The act outlines the requirements for providing this care, including eligibility criteria, directives, and other information to guide service delivery. The main strength of this legislation is that it creates a way for veterans to receive much-needed evidence-based interventions. The main weakness is that it creates a lot of overhead as the different parties try to coordinate with each other. However, the overall benefits veterans glean from this law outweigh any issues encountered in the process of delivering the care they need.
References
Cushing, R. E., & Braun, K. L. (2018). Mind–body therapy for military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder: a systematic review. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 24(2), 106-114. Web.
Florida Senate. (2019). House Bill 501 (2019) – The Florida Senate. Flsenate. Web.
Himmelstein, D. U., Campbell, T., & Woolhandler, S. (2020). Health care administrative costs in the United States and Canada, 2017. Annals of internal medicine, 172(2), 134-142. Web.
Kilbourne, A. M., Beck, K., Spaeth‐Rublee, B., Ramanuj, P., O’Brien, R. W., Tomoyasu, N., & Pincus, H. A. (2018). Measuring and improving the quality of mental health care: a global perspective. World psychiatry, 17(1), 30-38. Web.