Insurance companies offering plans in New York could soon be barred from denying coverage for critical mental health services under a new proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The policy, which was included in the governor’s 2023 State of the State priorities last month, aims to prohibit insurers from denying access to “medically necessary, high-need, acute, and crisis mental health services for both adults and children.” The governor’s plan would also help patients access better private and Medicaid coverage for mental health services, as well as have an easier time making appointments in more regions. The latter would ensure patients can get behavioral health services from in-network providers.

The proposal still requires legislative approval, but it comes as Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams both look to improve behavioral health access in response to homelessness, children’s school performance, and public safety-related concerns.

More details—like exactly what services must be covered and how much it could cost—are expected to come Wednesday as Hochul unveils her budget plan for the fiscal year, which begins on April 1.

The governor has argued that “fixing New York’s mental health care system is essential and long overdue.” Demand for behavioral health services spiked in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, though many New Yorkers “struggle with finding providers in their health insurance plan’s network,” according to the state’s Office of Mental Health.

“The barriers are seemingly endless. No appointments available close to home. Insurance won’t cover care. Long waits for psychiatric beds in hospitals. As a result, people have been forced to suffer in silence,” she said during her State of the State remarks on Jan. 10. “We have underinvested in mental health care for so long, and allowed the situation to become so dire, that it has become a public safety crisis as well.” Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Not even the healthcare industry is recession-proof.

New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), one of the country’s top cancer treatment facilities, laid off 337 employees on Jan. 17 in response to ongoing financial challenges, according to a New York State Department of Labor filing.

The 337 employees, who worked across 14 sites and in multiple departments, represent about 1.5% of MSK’s 22,500 employees. This is a slight decrease from the expected 3% of layoffs announced in November 2022.

“This reduction was necessary to ensure that MSK can continue to invest in the future of cancer care, research, and education for the benefit of generations to come, and every effort has been made to ensure that patient care is not impacted,” spokesperson John Connolly said in a statement shared with Healthcare Brew.

The institution’s operating losses totaled $116.1 million for Q3 of 2022, compared to a loss of $8.7 million during the same period in 2021, according to a quarterly financial report released in November last year.

Factors such as increased patient activity, wages, and supply costs from inflation pushed the system’s operating expenses up by 7.5% from Q3 of 2021 to Q3 of 2022. The cancer center hired more staff in 2022 with the expectation that patient volume would increase, according to the financial report.

Health systems like MSK often reevaluate their biggest expense (workers) when business is down, Lori Kalic, a healthcare senior analyst at consulting firm RSM, told Healthcare Brew.

Just this year, multiple hospitals and health systems have also announced layoffs, including Tufts Medicine in Boston and Integris Health in Oklahoma.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Maia Anderson, our first reporter hired to launch Healthcare Brew. Anderson, who is based in Los Angeles and is a relative newcomer to writing about healthcare, weighed in on how she does her job and the issues that stump her.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? How we get our stories—people don’t really understand that. My dad is not in healthcare, but he thought that someone else did the research for me and I just wrote. I had several people ask me at CES where I get my stories from. A lot of that is talking to a lot of people in the industry. That’s the biggest way we get stories. We want to reflect what’s actually going on in the industry and not just what we’re perceiving. That’s a big misconception. We’re not just pulling stories out of thin air.

How do you incorporate different perspectives into a story? The most important thing is thinking about whose voices are the most relevant for the story. There are a million different viewpoints for every single story, so that’s usually looking at who’s most affected by whatever this story is. For the [New York City] nursing strike, the most affected are the nurses themselves, but also the patients if there aren’t nurses to take care of them. And obviously getting the viewpoint of who they’re striking against because those two parties are going to have very different views about what’s going on.

How do you think your experience of being a military brat has influenced your reporting? It helps because I’ve lived in both big cities and very small towns. To see firsthand how different perspectives can be in Los Angeles versus Jamestown, Ohio, where I went to high school. Keep reading here.—AE

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Amanda at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Amanda for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: About 3.7 million people globally will make it to 100 by 2050, per the UN, up from the 593,000 centenarians alive today. (the Washington Post)

Quote: “We also know that being a firefighter is incredibly stressful. They’re exposed to traumatic events, which can have a negative impact on reproductive health.”—Leslie Farland, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s college of public health, on reasons why firefighters may struggle to carry pregnancies to full term (the 19th)

Read: An analysis of mass shootings in the past 50 years points to a pattern of “deaths of despair,” a term that the NYT suggests is behind why more and more predominately white men turn to “extreme ideologies to cope with their failures and to find a sense of purpose.” (the New York Times)

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