El Paso MHMR won't have to pay $600,000 to state of Texas

From KFOX-TV:

EL PASO, Texas -- Part of El Paso Mental Health and Mental Retardation (MHMR) money woes stemmed from the fact that they had to repay $823,000 to the state in Medicaid Mental Health Funds. But now, the program will only have to pay about a quarter of that back to the state, or approximately $225,000.

County Commissioner Veronica Escobar, working with State Senator Eliot Shapleigh and state lobbyists, approached the Texas Department of Health Services and asked what MHMR did wrong to have to make these payments.

The state reopened bills dating back to 2007, and worked with MHMR to make sure all of the repayments were justified.

Escobar said MHMR officials have learned from this experience.

"Not just go back a few years and recoup money that we were going to have to send back, or that they were going to have to send back, but we also are preventing it from happening in the future," Escobar told KFOX.

Escobar said the $600,000 MHMR saved will go right back into the program, hoping to ease some of the major financial issues it's been having.