The transformation of behavioral healthcare in New Mexico.

Since 1997, public-sector behavioral healthcare in New Mexico has remained under continual transition. We have conducted qualitative research to examine recent efforts in NM to establish a recovery-oriented behavioral healthcare system, focusing on comprehensive community support services, clinical homes, and core service agencies. We examine how decisions made in the outer context (e.g., the system level) shaped the implementation of each initiative within the inner context of service provision (e.g., provider agencies). We also clarify how sociopolitical factors, as exemplified in changes instituted by one gubernatorial administration and undone by its successor, can undermine implementation efforts and create crises within fragile behavioral healthcare systems. Finally, we discuss findings in relation to efforts to promote wraparound service planning and to establish medical home models under national healthcare reform.

Lost in the rush to national reform: recommendations to improve impact on behavioral health providers in rural areas.

As the United States embarks on the most ambitious national health reform since the 1960s, this article highlights the challenges faced by behavioral health agencies, providers, and clients in rural areas and presents recommendations to improve access to and quality of services. Lessons learned from five years of research on a major systems-change initiative in New Mexico illuminate potential problem areas for rural agencies under national health reform, including insufficient financial resources, shortages of trained staff, particularly clinicians with advanced credentials, and delays in adopting the latest information technology. We recommend that rural states: (1) undertake careful planning for smooth transitions; (2) provide financial resources and technical assistance to expand rural safety-net services and capacity; (3) modify the health home model for the rural context; and (4) engage in ongoing evaluation, which can help ensure the early identification and rectification of unanticipated implementation issues.

Community participation in New Mexico's behavioral health care reform.

In 2005, New Mexico implemented a unique reform in managed behavioral health services that seeks to ensure delivery of consumer-driven, recovery-oriented care to low-income individuals. Distinguishing features of the reform are the Local Collaboratives (LCs), regionally based community organizations designed by state government to represent behavioral health concerns of New Mexico's diverse cultural populations. We examine community response to the LCs, focusing on two broad sets of themes derived from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork. The first set--structure and function--encompasses several issues: predominance of provider versus consumer voice; insufficient resources to support internal operations; imposition of state administrative demands; and perceived lack of state response to LC efforts. The second set--participation and collaboration--reveals how problems of information flow and other logistical factors impact involvement in LCs and how the construction of "community" introduced under this initiative exacerbates tensions across localities with varied histories and populations.

Managed care or managed inequality? A call for critiques of market-based medicine.

This review article critiques the growing dominance of market-based medicine in the United States against the background of existing problems with quality of care, rising costs, devaluation of doctor-patient relationships, and, especially, persistent inequalities of access and outcomes. It summarizes the present state of health care delivery by focusing on the concurrent trends of growth in managed care, expanding profits, increasing proportion of those uninsured, and widening racial, ethnic, and class disparities in access to care. Allowing market forces to dictate the shape of health care delivery in this country ensures that inequalities will continue to grow and modern medicine will become increasingly adept at managing inequality rather than managing (providing) care. The article challenges anthropology to become more involved in critiquing these developments and suggests how anthropologists can expand on and contextualize debates surrounding the market's role in medicine, here and abroad.