Bill would let smaller behavioral health units add beds

Eligible units could raise their licensed bed count to no more than 30 without a state needs review or approval. This applies to inpatient behavioral health units in state-licensed hospitals or other health facilities with fewer than 30 licensed beds. Units must give the state Health Department written notice listing their current bed count, the beds they will add, and where those beds will go. This would start on the first day of the fourth month after enactment.

Contracts would set a payment rate of at least $675 per patient per day for inpatient behavioral health care. This covers care at any authorized inpatient behavioral health unit in a state-licensed hospital or other health facility, regardless of bed count, under contracts formed on or after the law takes effect. The minimum must follow federal law. Later increases would follow any rise in a measure of consumer prices for the New York area. The law would take effect on the first day of the fourth month after enactment. Yearly price-based increases would begin January 1 of the second calendar year after that.