Rashmi Patel, MD, PhD

This analysis compared health care resource utilization and costs for Medicaid patients with serious mental illness between US states with low vs high reimbursement rates for psychiatric services.

Medicaid’s Institution for Mental Diseases (IMD) rule bars federal funding for psychiatric facilities with more than 16 beds, but findings indicate that state waivers allowing treatment of serious mental illness in IMDs do not increase overall psychiatric hospitalizations.