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ALPENA — Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health Authority (NeMCMH) has recently partnered with other community mental health authorities in Northern Michigan to sue the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and the Michigan Department of Technology, Management, and Budget (DTMB). The lawsuit was initially filed on Oct. 9 and NeMCMH is preparing to attend a hearing regarding the case in early December.

Nena Sork, NeMCMH executive director, said that the lawsuit is against a request for proposal (RFP) for services that MDHHS put out in August. Sork stated that the proposal will strip the organization of their “statutory obligations” that the mental health code requires NeMCMH to perform.

“So things that are in the mental health code that by law we must do, that went through the legislative process and became law, this RFP would strip us of those obligations,” Sork explained. “We believe that it’s illegal the way the RFP is out there now, that they could do that.”

Sork said that the state will still require NeMCMH to perform their services as dictated in the mental health code without allowing NeMCMH, or other community mental health authorities, to bid on the RFP. This will force mental health authorities to provide services through private organizations.

“Basically, it’s taking public systems that’ve been around for over 55 years and trying to put it in the hands of the private sector,” Sork said.

Sork said that the “basic premise” of the lawsuit is that NeCMH, and its partnerships, believe DTMB and MDHHS are attempting to create a “competitive procurement” of services without “any legal authority to do so.”

Sork said the implications of the RFP restructuring will take away local control and will not require organizations receiving the RFP services to comply with the Open Meetings Act or Freedom of Information Act requests.

“It will be a big change to our system,” Sork said.

Sork said that community mental health authorities in urban areas are able to contract services out to other providers, so the RFP process may not affect them as much. However, NeMCMH does not have the flexibility to do so, since there are not enough providers that meet the needs of NeMCMH’s patient base.

“We don’t have any of those businesses here,” Sork said. “We’ve tried to recruit them because it’s hard to staff for us at times … there’s nobody that can step in and contract and do this.”

Sork also stated that it will be difficult to bill services as there are no “billing codes” in relation to some of the specialty services they provide. She added that CMH serves cases of serious and persistent mental illness in a “specialized population of intellectual, developmental, disabled folks and mentally ill people.”

Sork explained that NeMCMH is using extra money they received from the state for high performance, not money that is required to perform services.

NeMCMH is participating in this lawsuit with the following community mental health authorities and county governments in Northern Michigan:

— Centra Wellness Network, which serves Manistee and Benzie counties.

— Wellvance, which serves Iosco, Ogemaw, and Oscoda counties.

— Gogebic Community Mental Health, which serves Gogebic County.

— North County Community Mental Health, which serves Emmett, Cheboygan, Charlevoix, Otsego, Antrim, and Kalkaska counties.

— Manistee County Commissioners

NeMCMH serves Alpena, Alcona, Montmorency, and Presque Isle counties.

Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.