Increasing California children's Medicaid-financed mental health treatment by vigorously implementing Medicaid's Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) Program.
BACKGROUND
Children living in poverty-especially children living in rural areas and in areas lacking a commitment to providing mental health care-have considerable unmet need for mental health treatment. Expansion of Medicaid's Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) program might help to address this problem.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether a legally compelled expansion of mental health screening, treatment, and financing under EPSDT would translate into higher Medicaid penetration rates. Our particular focus was on changes in rural treatment systems and systems historically receiving low levels of state funding (ie, "underequity" counties).


METHODS
We used fixed-effects regression methods by observing 53 California county mental health plans over 36 quarters, yielding 1908 observations. Our models controlled for all static, county, and service system characteristics, and for ongoing linear trends in penetration rates.


RESULTS
After controlling for previous trends, mental health treatment access increased following EPSDT mental health program expansion. The increase was greatest in rural systems, and counties that previously received less state funding which showed the greatest penetration rate increases.


CONCLUSIONS
EPSDT mental health expansion and increased funding increased Medicaid-financed mental health treatment. The expansion efforts had the greatest effects in rural and underequity counties that faced the greatest barriers to mental health service use.
Snowden
Lonnie R
LR
School of Social Welfare and Center for Mental Health Services Research, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7400, USA. snowden@berkeley.edu
Masland
Mary
M
Wallace
Neal
N
Fawley-King
Kya
K
Cuellar
Alison Evans
AE
D000293:Adolescent; D002140:California; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D002648:Child; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D005380:Financing, Government; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008484:Medicaid; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D019370:Observation; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012424:Rural Population; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population