Achieving value-based care for your health system can increase quality patient care, improve provider satisfaction, and reduce total cost of care for your organization.
But how can your health system achieve these benefits? Keep reading to learn how to advance your journey toward value-based care in a scalable and financially sustainable way.
Value-based care improves patient outcomes
Value-based care helps hold providers accountable for improving patient outcomes and gives them more flexibility to provide the right care at the right time.
While many health systems aim to provide value-based care, it’s not always possible given the need to treat a large variety of ages, acuities, and diagnoses.
For example, due to increasing patient volumes, many hospitals must triage patients who need referrals and immediate help in the ED. This approach causes delayed care and no follow-up, creating a barrier to providing the care that patients need and deserve.
Due to growing referral queues, follow-up challenges, and inefficient workflows, helping patients receive a high level of care isn’t always an option. Before an organization can be proactive and lean into a value-based care model, they must help patients with effective care that facilitates better patient outcomes and fills gaps in ambulatory and post-acute behavioral health care.
Fortunately, strategic and purposeful virtual behavioral health care services can help health systems address need in their ED and throughout their hospital.
Filling gaps in care across the behavioral health continuum
Every health system faces a hierarchy of needs regarding patient care, and helping those with the highest acuity is top priority. To help the most patients and remain financially sustainable, investing in the right behavioral health programs and resources is essential.
What does a financially sustainable behavioral health program look like in practice? Let’s take a look at two essential solutions health systems are leveraging today:
- On-Demand Services: This solution helps organizations decrease the burden on their care teams by providing 24/7 ED support – improving wait times and costly and inefficient psychiatric boarding in the hospital.
- Virtual Clinic: By integrating behavioral health through the patient journey, this solution helps improve holistic care and ultimately decrease long-term costs.
Both of these solutions deploy fully integrated quality tracking and data analytics to drive optimization and ensure these programs run effectively and continue improving patient outcomes.
Benefits of value-based behavioral health care
Once an organization achieves value-based behavioral health care for their population, they reap many benefits, some of which, according to The Commonwealth Fund include reduction in cost care and improvement of quality of care. The Commonwealth Fund also highlights how value-based care can transform collaboration and allow providers to spend more time facilitating care related to counseling or screening for social needs.
Additionally, according to a behavioral health analysis by Evernorth Health Services, treating behavioral health conditions in outpatient care is directly tied with a reduction in medical and pharmacy costs. In their analysis, they highlight savings up to $2,565 per person over the 15 months following a diagnosis and up to $3,321 per person over the 27 months following a diagnosis.
Here are a few other key benefits that value-based behavioral health care can provide:
- Healthier and more satisfied patient population
- More fulfilled providers facilitating quality care
- Lower total cost of care that helps you meet financial objectives
- Better care so patients don’t escalate
At Iris Telehealth, our partners have successfully leveraged our services and helped move their organization towards a value-based care model. At Geisinger Health, we’ve helped procure the following results with Bridge Care Services:
- 83% reduction in referral backlog (18,000 – 3,000) within 6 months
- 40 % of their psychiatry referrals were diverted to a lower, more cost-effective level of care
- 38% improvement in their patient’s depression symptoms over eight weeks of care
To read the full story, check out our case study outlining how they leveraged our Bridge Care Services program.
Get started on your journey towards value-based care mental health services
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your organization help your hospital or health system address patient needs in your community, contact us today
