Credentialing, Licensing, and Reimbursing Peers Working to
Support the Behavioral Health of
Service Members, Veterans, and their Families
Date: January 28, 2015
Time: 2:00-3:30 p.m. EST
The role of peers is becoming recognized as invaluable to supporting the behavioral health of Service Members, Veterans, and their Families (SMVF). Workforce development includes peer support services as an essential component to meeting this need. Credentialing and licensing SMVF peers can play an important role in workforce development. Although most states now have credentialing and licensing for peer support services, new enhancements include tailoring services to the unique needs of SMVF. This webinar will explore the trends and benefits of credentialing, licensing, and reimbursement for peer support services to enhance care for SMVF in your community.
Objectives
- Explore peer support models that use credentialing, licensing, and reimbursement in military and civilian behavioral health systems
- Identify approaches that include standards, essential core competencies, and best practices for meeting Medicaid requirements for reimbursement of SMVF peer services
- Describe how peers can work in collaboration with managed care entities that operate state behavioral health contracts
Target Audience
Representatives serving SMVF from state, territory, and tribal behavioral health systems, providers, mental health and addiction peers, military family coalitions, advocates, credentialing entities, and licensing boards
Presenters
Keris Jän Myrick, M.S., M.B.A., Director, Consumer Affairs, Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Donna Aligata, R.N.C., Project Director, SAMHSA’s SMVF Technical Assistance Center, Policy Research Associates, Inc.
Sue Bergeson, Vice President of Consumer and Family Affairs, OptumHealth
Wendy White Tiegreen, M.S.W., Director, Medicaid and Health System Innovation, Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities
Click here to register prior to the event: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/300381442973075969
Please note:
- Participants will only be able to hear the webinar through their computer via headphones or speakers
- Participants are asked to test their system before the broadcast
- The webinar archive will be made available to registrants after the webinar
If you have any questions about your registration, please contact Lisa Guerin, Senior Administrative Assistant, at 518-439-7415 ext. 5242 or by e-mail at lguerin@prainc.com.
Presenter Biographies
Donna Aligata, R.N.C. | Project Director, SAMHSA’s SMVF TA Center, Policy Research Associates, Inc.
Ms. Aligata is the Project Director for SAMHSA’s SMVF TA Center at Policy Research Associates. In this capacity, she provides technical assistance to 46 states, 4 territories, and the District of Columbia. She has served as the moderator of 20 SAMHSA Policy Academies since 1992. She brings technical experience in substance abuse and mental health recovery and prevention priority areas. Ms. Aligata is nationally known for strategic planning and implementing recovery-oriented, policy-to-practice systems change. Ms. Aligata has worked on a wide variety of cross-agency federal, state, and community behavioral health initiatives, including serving as Project Director for 4 years of the SAMHSA, Centers for Disease Control, and Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV Cross-Training Project, and serving as Deputy Director of SAMHSA’s Prison Technical Assistance Project. Ms. Aligata co-founded and served as the Executive Director of Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families, a nonprofit youth and family peer support organization. Ms. Aligata is a certified as a mental health nurse practitioner. She is a person in recovery. Ms. Aligata is married to a Vietnam veteran and comes from a military family.
Sue Bergeson | Vice President of Consumer and Family Affairs, OptumHealth
Ms. Bergeson is the Vice President of Consumer and Family Affairs for OptumHealth, the behavioral health arm of United Health Care, a large managed care company. Ms. Bergeson is responsible for developing behavioral health programs that help people living with mental illness and substance use disorders achieve long-term recovery and resiliency. She has brought peer support as a reimbursable service into OptumHealth including facilitating the creation of guidelines for level of care, reimbursement, statement of work, contracting, and credentials. She has developed training programs to teach consumer-run programs how to contract with managed care organizations to create sustainable funding through delivering peer-coaching programs. She has developed tools to help peer coaches assess and provide the right self-care tools and resources at the right time for the consumer being served. Before joining OptumHealth, Ms. Bergeson helped lead the country’s largest consumer-run national organization, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA). She is a consumer of mental health services, comes from a family of mental health consumers, and has been deeply affected both personally and professionally by her sister’s death by suicide.
Keris Jän Myrick, M.S., M.B.A. | Director, Consumer Affairs, Center for Mental Health Services, SAMHSA
Ms. Myrick is the Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs at the Center for Mental Health Services, SAMHSA. The Office of Consumer Affairs supports the inclusion of Peer/Consumer perspectives and issues throughout the agency and supports such programs as the Voice Awards, SAMHSA Wellness Initiatives and Wellness Week, Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center, and the Recovery to Practice Project. She is a national mental health leader and former non-profit executive known for her innovative and inclusive approach to mental health reform and the public disclosure of her personal story of lived experience with serious mental illness. Most recently, she has been President and CEO of Project Return Peer Support Network, a Los Angeles-based, peer-run nonprofit. In addition, she has been the President of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and an advisor to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Office of Diversity and Health Equity, providing assistance with the psychiatry component of the SAMHSA/CMHS Recovery to Practice project. Ms. Myrick has a Master of Science degree in organizational psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology of Alliant International University. Her Master of Business Administration degree, with an emphasis on marketing, is from Case Western Reserve University. Ms. Myrick is the daughter of a two-time war veteran and retired Army officer, Dr. Howard A. Myrick (Colonel, retired), and is known for speaking about and using her lived experience as a military family member to inform her work and life.
Wendy White Tiegreen, M.S.W. | Director, Medicaid and Health System Innovation, Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities
Ms. Tiegreen is the Director of Medicaid and Health System Innovation for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities. Ms. Tiegreen has spent the majority of her career as the state behavioral health liaison to Georgia’s Medicaid authority. In that role, she was the primary mental health negotiator with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the original establishment of peer supports as a unique Medicaid-financed service. Recently, she has brokered with the Georgia Medicaid authority to expand peer support services. Ms. Tiegreen has over 20 years of professional experience working in service delivery and administration in the public behavioral health sector. In various roles, she has managed the contract for the state’s External Review Organization, as well as for the award-winning Georgia Crisis and Access Line. She is the Principle Investigator for a CMS grant which is establishing a Parent and Youth Peer workforce in Georgia.
