As of January 1, 2008, Pierce County became the first county in Washington to not contract with the state as a Regional Service Network (RSN) – the entity that was created in the early 1990s to pay for local delivery of managed-care mental health services around the state.  In early 2009, DSHS announced that public mental health services in Pierce County would be administered by OptumHealth, a private sector company. Previously, we received a calendar year report from the Pierce County-administered RSN, Moving forward the data we receive from OptumHealth will be State Fiscal Year reports, i.e. July through June of each year.  The first complete data set available from OptumHealth is dated 7/1/2009 to 6/30/2010.

In State Fiscal Year 2009-10, 15,066 unduplicated individuals were served by the RSN in Pierce County.  This is a 1.8% decrease since 2007, the last reported calendar year.

In 2007, the unduplicated number of individuals served was 15,532, up 7% from 14,888 in 2006.  From 1993 to 1994, the first year in which managed mental health care was implemented in Pierce County, the number of individuals served increased by 30% from 10,207 to 13,259.  From 1994 through 2001, the number of individuals served increased an average of 4.8% a year, or by more than 725 individuals annually.  Between 2003 to 2005, the number of people served decreased, but began rising again in 2006.   

Seen below is the mental health patients served by the RSN by age cohort.  While the total numbers served has remained about the same since 2007, the number of seniors served decreased by 24%.