Kathleen Nolan, regional vice president at Health Management Associates, says her highest priority is the continued improvement of behavioral health policy. We caught up with her at our 2023 Washington State of Reform conference in January to hear about what she’s keeping her eyes on in the health policy space, where she said responding to the impacts of COVID and supplementing the workforce are key areas of need for Washington State behavioral healthcare.
For Nolan, it’s important to ensure states are fully informed about opportunities that arise from federal behavioral health policy changes in order to maximize their benefit.
“One of the things that I’ve seen a lot of is, when there’s new money that comes out to address a problem, people scramble. They put it into place, they spend it, but they don’t always get good results from it … One of the things that HMA is really focused on is how to implement best practices in behavioral health integration and in behavioral health reforms that are going to make a real difference for people.”