Health systems are responding to fragmented behavioral healthcare delivery in different ways: expanding telepsychiatry in rural states, building pediatric health hubs that integrate mental and physical health on one campus, launching behavioral health urgent cares, and investing in navigators and data infrastructure to keep patients connected after discharge. In West Virginia, the access challenge is…
Though by many measures and behaviors we’ve shifted to the endemic phase of COVID-19, our health care system continues to grapple with a crisis exacerbated by the pandemic: mental health. The ongoing difficulties and uncertainties driven by the pandemic led to a worsening of many pre-existing mental health issues and the emergence of new ones….
Many Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are eyeing behavioral health integration to drive down the cost of care, boost accessibility and improve overall health outcomes. ACOs work outside the traditional fee-for-service model. Instead, provider reimbursement is tied to the quality of care and overall spending reduction. While several studies have documented the impacts of behavioral health…
When the covid-19 pandemic swept the country in early 2020 and emptied doctors’ offices nationwide, telemedicine was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Patients and their physicians turned to virtual visits by video or phone rather than risk meeting face-to-face. During the early months of the pandemic, telehealth visits for care exploded. “It was a dramatic shift…
At psychiatric hospitals and other inpatient behavioral health facilities, good performance on routine quality measures does not necessarily lead to improvement in symptoms and other patient self-reported outcomes (SROs), reports a study in the November/December issue of the Journal for Healthcare Quality (JHQ), the peer-reviewed journal of the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ). “[O]ur analyses suggest…
COVID-19 exacted a toll on health citizens’ mental health, worsening a public health challenge that was already acute before the pandemic. It’s World Mental Health Day, an event marked by global and local stakeholders across the mental health ecosystem. On the global front, the World Health Organization (WHO) describes the universal phenomenon and burden of mental…
Despite high demand, access to quality and affordable mental health care remains a challenge for many Americans. Less than half of those with mental health illness receive care and only about 10 percent of those with substance use disorders receive treatment, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. For people of color,…
In 2019, more than 1 in 5 US adults experienced mental illness, with 5.2% experiencing serious mental illness. In 2020, the percentage of uninsured adults with mental illness increased to 10.5%, and 57% of all US adults experiencing a mental illness received no treatment. Existing issues with the fractured mental health care system in the…
Health plans in the United States are increasingly shifting away from traditional fee-for-service (FFS) reimbursement toward value-based care (VBC) models, which incent the quality of care as opposed to quantity. Although the promise of high-quality, cost-effective care is alluring, the adoption of and engagement in these programs has proven challenging for both plans and providers…