The decision by Arizona-based mental health care provider La Frontera to pull out of New Mexico means patients here will once again face a transition to be handled by the state Human Services Department.

We can only hope they’ve learned from past mistakes.

In the summer of 2013, the Human Services Department hastily contracted with La Frontera and other Arizona firms to take over mental health services after freezing funding for 15 New Mexico providers when an outside audit alleged millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud.

It was not a smooth transition. La Frontera set up shop without a New Mexico pharmacy license, and so one of its first actions was to shut down the in-house pharmacy and send patients elsewhere for their medications. While a license was eventually secured, things didn’t get much better from there.

Read more here: http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-news/ci_27977975/mental-health-audit