Carving an Essential Niche: A Conversation with Valleywise Health’s Warren Whitney
Advocacy in Washington, D.C., was always a crowded space, and the COVID-19 public health emergency only made it more so. How do you effectively carve out a space for Valleywise Health? How does America’s Essential Hospitals help amplify your message?
We have spent a lot of time developing good working relationships with our congressional delegation and their staffs. Before the pandemic hit, that outreach included quarterly visits to the Hill. As COVID-19 shut down in-person visits, we continued to keep in contact with congressional staff and members through phone calls, Zoom calls, and emails. In Arizona, we have been very fortunate to have some of the most responsive members and staff on the Hill.
America’s Essential Hospitals has been a critical part of helping to amplify the messaging by providing consistent and accurate information for us (and for association members nationwide) to use in our advocacy work with the Arizona delegation. Having this unified message has been key to our success.
Valleywise faced unique challenges in qualifying for the Provider Relief Fund, despite being the main safety net provider for much of Arizona and facing extreme COVID-19 surges. Can you talk a little bit about this challenge and the work you all have undertaken to address it?
This has been challenging due to the financial reporting requirements and our unique structure as a public/government health system with a voter-approved secondary property tax dedicated to the debt service on a capital bond issue. The eligibility requirements placed our profitability above the qualifying threshold due to the debt service secondary property tax. This work is ongoing, but the process does not provide an opportunity for appeal or reconsideration. The Arizona delegation is unified in its support of our position and continues to help us with our request for additional review of our unique situation.
Valleywise, like many essential hospitals, provides critical, specialized services to your community. This is especially true on the mental and behavioral health front. How is Valleywise a leader in this space, and what more do you need from lawmakers to amplify your mental and behavioral health work?
Valleywise Health has been a leader in behavioral health in Maricopa County for decades. Last year, Valleywise Health provided nearly a quarter of the total inpatient behavioral stays throughout Maricopa County in three inpatient behavioral health facilities in Mesa, Phoenix, and Maryvale. Valleywise also provides outpatient integrated behavioral health services at its 11 federally qualified health centers located in medically underserved areas across the county.
Valleywise Health is the sole provider of court-ordered inpatient behavioral health care in Maricopa County, with 433 licensed beds in three separate facilities. [We] also offer innovative programs, such as the First Episode Center, designed to provide services to teens and young adults who suffer their first psychotic break. Valleywise Health has a direct care clinic for people with serious mental illness. Also, our Assertive Community Treatment program for people with serious mental illness works to reduce hospital and emergency department visits, incarceration, homelessness, and unemployment.
We are asking lawmakers for their continued support of our mission as the only public safety net health care system in Arizona. Because of the challenges in providing behavioral health care in both inpatient and outpatient settings, we are struggling to keep staff, and the current pandemic-driven staff shortages across the entire health care industry only make this worse.
Reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the association, what does your membership in America’s Essential Hospitals mean to you?
Our membership in America’s Essential Hospitals is probably our most valuable asset for federal advocacy. The association’s policy staff is always one step ahead in research and tracking issues of importance to essential hospitals and health systems like Valleywise Health. As essential hospitals, our issues are specific to safety net services and the patients we serve, and the association tracks those issues and organizes us around common areas of interest and concern.
America’s Essential Hospitals also can evaluate the political landscape nationally and help organize us as a national system by identifying the most critical members of Congress on any specific issue to advocate through members in their state or district. We are proud that our Valleywise Health president and CEO, Steve Purves, has the honor of serving as the America’s Essential Hospitals board chair during this milestone year.
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