Final Report & Gaps Analysis

The analysis presents the current status of North Carolinas mental health service system and presents a comparison with national averages. Key findings include

• North Carolina serves more people in inpatient settings that the national average. The state hospital admission rate of 1.26 per 1,000 people is the highest inpatient referral rate in the nation; the national average is 0.61 per 1,000
   
• North Carolina spends 65.5% of its funding for mental health and substance abuse treatment on inpatient facilities. The national average is 37.7%. The state spends $16.80 per capita for community-based services, which is the lowest in the nation.
   
• Hospital inpatient admissions are driven in part by referring staff bias for inpatient treatment and a lack of information sharing between emergency room staffs and Local Management Entities (LME) and lack of utilization controls to divert people to more appropriate settings
   
• LMEs do not report which services they offer, so referrers have no way to know if the LME can meet a persons needs and there is no formal state-supervised process to downsize inpatient facilities and build up community-based services