Nadia Chait describes discharge medication failure and opposes Intro 453

Good afternoon, Chair Brooks-Powers.

I'm Nadia Cheat.

I'm the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at Cases.

We serve over 12,000 New Yorkers annually with a specialty in serving folks with serious mental illness and criminal legal system involvement.

DOC and CHS described a world today that I wish existed for our clients, but it doesn't.

And it is frustrating to see those agencies continue to state that they are providing adequate care

and producing people for their mental health appointments when their own data, as well as the numerous monitors of the city's various consent decrees that they are continually not in compliance with, show that that is not the case.

And so I'd like to share a story of one of our clients.

our clients who recently experienced what happens when DOC and CHS fail at their basic duties.

And I would like to state at the front that this was a client with a known release date.

So this is the easiest scenario for them to succeed, right?

And this was an individual coming into our Nathaniel Act Alternative to Incarceration program.

The individual was due for their long-acting injectable on the day of their release.

They did not receive it.

The individual's Medicaid should have been active.

It was set to inpatient, which means that they can't receive community care.

The individual's prescription was not sent to a pharmacy, so even though...

That prescription would be covered by the city's medication grant program, which is designed to cover that gap when individuals'Medicaid is not active.

They had no coverage for that prescription.

And this was an individual who was on electronic monitoring, and so they were very, very hesitant to leave their residence and go somewhere to seek the injection, like a hospital,

where they could have been forced to wait many hours and where there could have been potential compliance implications.

We were ultimately able to get the medication called into the pharmacy the following day and pick it up and bring it to that individual's residence.

But that was a 24-hour delay in this individual receiving their needed medication.

And this is for people with the best scenario of wraparound care.

So instead, we should really focus on diverting people before they enter.

interact with the system and in earlier stages, which my written testimony details.

We also oppose intro 453 as written.

Thank you.

Thank you.