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The Daily Tar Heel

Orange County mental healthcare merger advances

With a merger in the works for Orange County’s only mental healthcare management entity and a new Medicaid expansion bill on the table, local providers are hopeful statewide changes to mental healthcare will improve quality in the county as well.

Earlier this year, the OPC Area Program — which manages a network of publicly funded mental health, developmental disability and substance abuse services in Orange, Person and Chatham counties — chose to merge with Piedmont Behavioral Healthcare after the Orange County organization fell below a newly issued minimum service population.

Judy Truitt, area director of OPC, said PBH, which serves Cabarrus, Union, Davidson, Stanly and Rowan counties, has led North Carolina in using the Medicaid waiver.

Truitt said the OPC board approved Monday implementing use of the waiver by April 2012.

The waiver will bring state and Medicaid funding — the two largest sources of revenue for many service providers — under the control of one authority, she said.

“I think that everyone believes that managing all of those under one umbrella gives you the opportunity to be more creative,” Truitt said.

Karen Kincaid Dunn, executive director of Club Nova — a mental healthcare provider in Carrboro — said she hopes her group will benefit from the merger.

“We are fortunate that we have some very well-informed leadership, but there are clearly a lot of people out there who have not sought treatment for mental illness,” she said.

Bernadette Pelissier, chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, said mental health is a critical issue in the county.

“With the cuts we’ve been experiencing and are continuing to happen, people often cannot get the services they need in a timely fashion,” she said.

Pelissier said she hopes OPC will be able to increase the number and variety of services it offers, as PBH was able to do after it implemented the waiver.

The Arc of North Carolina, a group that advocates and provides services for individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities, originally opposed the merger.

Robin Baker, executive director of the local chapter of the Arc of N.C., said the group was concerned with how the merger would affect services.

“We’ve heard that people are concerned as far as not knowing what to expect with changes in services and if there would still be local decision making,” he said.

Baker said his organization does not expect to lose funding due to the merger and has withdrawn its opposition, but he is concerned about how the administration of OPC will change.

“The only thing we are worried about is that some of the personnel we’ve come to work with well will not be there,” he said.

Truitt said while some restructuring within the organization may occur, OPC will retain its local presence after the merger.

“For many people, the truth of the matter is they may not even notice the change,” she said. “The local presence will still be who the community participates with.”

Contact the City Editor at city @dailytarheel.com.

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