Sunset Commission Issues Brutal Report on Dept. of State Health Services
Next week, the Sunset Advisory Commission will meet to hear testimony regarding its scathing report on the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), one of the largest and most important state agencies. Scathing is a term that gets thrown around a lot but really ought to be reserved for dispatches like this one, released in May, which saves special condemnation for the departments many failures in running the states public mental health system. This experiment was well-intentioned, the report says, referring to the department as a whole, but DSHS has struggled to address longstanding concerns, despite clear and repeated direction. Because of this, most of the Sunset staff recommendations dont break new ground but reflect a need for the agency to simply do its job better.
While the report specifies nine areas for improvement, its authors note that this list is constrained by the resources of their review, not by any limit to the departments problems. They even suggest that by the time the Sunset review concludes next fall, future reports may question continuation of DSHS as a standalone agency. The report goes beyond critical and gets existential.
Some of the recommendations are specific, like calls to combat fraud in the EMS industry, to better protect vital statistics information, and to reduce the departments regulatory role. But some are just damning pronouncements: DSHS Has Not Provided the Leadership Needed to Best Manage the States Public Health System; and DSHS Numerous Advisory Committees Lack Strategic Purpose, Limiting Their Effectiveness and Wasting Resources.
Perhaps the broadest and most troubling part of the report is its wholesale indictment of the state public mental health system. That system has two parts: outpatient community-based treatment, and inpatient treatment through the state mental health hospitals. According to the report, both are broken.
More at http://www.texasobserver.org/sunset-commission-issues-brutal-report-department-state-health-services/ .