Universities are making changes to the health services they provide on campus. At ASU, a nurse practitioner who provided psychiatric medication management to some patients is no longer on campus.
Students are still able to get mental health services from other providers on campus, and those who had seen that nurse practitioner are being offered assistance in finding a health provider.
This isn’t the only university in the country that has taken this step.
For more on this, we turn to Dr. Greg Eells, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Cornell University and the former Mental Health Chair at the American College Health Association.
On Wednesday, we also heard from ASU about its approach to providing these services.
Statement From Arizona State University There has been no change to the services provided by ASU Health Services or ASU Counseling services. These services are provided throughout our four campus locations and are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In cases when a student needs the specialized assistance of a psychiatrist, ASU Health and Counseling Services guide the student to a provider from our extensive network of local psychiatrists. For several years ASU has augmented its counseling services with an extensive network of psychiatric health providers to provide psychiatric services to its student population. Additionally, ASU primary care physicians have the capacity to prescribe psychiatric mediations, and students who seek additional or specialized psychiatric treatment under the care of a medical doctor are referred to a robust network of providers. These providers are known to ASU – they are more accessible, faster, closer to home and take a variety of insurance carriers, making them more affordable to more students. The exception to this was a small, unique offering that has been available only at the College of Nursing at the Downtown Campus. It is this program, which was used by an average of four patients a day, many of whom were not students, that is being discontinued. Those patients will now, like the rest of ASU students, receive guidance and referrals to other providers to meet their care needs – a more efficient system. Every referral ensures that the student’s needs for care, insurance and location are met. As a university in a major metropolitan area, we have a distinct advantage of utilizing robust medical expertise in the community.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect ASU students can still get mental health services on campuses, clarify the changes at ASU and add the statement from the university.
Updated 8/26/2015 at 1:18 p.m.
