Former ValueOptions employees and others say refusals like that happen all the time. Discouraging doctors and patients from using expensive hospital treatment that doctors feel is necessary. The company also wants its psychiatrists to spend only 20 minutes with each patient. ValueOptions officials concede that problems exist in the Valley's mental health system. It's obviously a challenge.
Criticism is part of life.
When you're looking at every consumer, every family, every organization, every psychiatrist, every provider, you're just not going to please everyone. We do our best. Many Valley social-service workers, advocates and doctors think otherwise. It's about business. The middleman In September 1998, ValueOptions got the state contract as the mental health maintenance organization for the county's poor and uninsured, including all residents whose private insurance has run out.