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It is an irony that troubles health care providers and policymakers nationwide: Even as public awareness of mental illness increases, a shortage of psychiatrists worsens. In vast swaths of America, patients face lengthy drives to reach the nearest psychiatrist, if they can even find one willing to see them. Some states are promoting wider use of long-distance telepsychiatry to fill the gaps in care. In Texas, which faces a severe shortage, lawmakers recently voted to pay the student loans of psychiatrists willing to work in underserved areas. A bill in Congress would forgive student loans for child psychiatrists. (9/2)

In her third year of medical school, Karen Duong found herself on the other side of Texas. She had driven 12 hours north from where she grew up on the Gulf Coast to a panhandle town called Hereford. "Hereford is known for being the beef capital of the world,” she says, laughing. “There’s definitely more cows than people out there.” (Silverman, 9/3)

Children in foster care are prescribed antipsychotic drugs at double to quadruple the rate of that not in foster care, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Hundreds of children were found to be taking five or more psychotropic medications at a time, although there is no medical evidence to support such a drug regimen. Thousands of children were prescribed doses that exceeded FDA-approved guidelines. The report found monitoring programs for psychotropic drugs provided to foster children fell short of guidelines established by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (Korry, 9/2)

Democratic legislators want to know why the state Department of Health cancelled a request last winter for applications to expand the number of beds available for psychiatric patients. The lawmakers’ call for answers about the cancellation is driven by concerns of behavioral-health providers and hospital officials who say emergency departments are under a great deal of pressure to find beds for psychiatric patients. State officials said that they’ve received the request and are reviewing it. (Kitchenman, 9/2)

A federal rule buried in a host of other proposed Medicare and Medicaid changes has nursing home administrators in Kansas — and other states — shaking their heads. Released in July, the rule would require nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to have residents examined by a doctor, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist before they are transferred to a hospital. Failure to comply could cause a “deficiency” mark in the nursing home’s annual Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services review. Such marks can lead to fines, withheld payments and downgrades in a facility’s publicly available CMS rating. (Marso, 9/2)