For many hospitals and health systems, the emergency room is the front line for care for patients who need psychiatric help. According to the National Council for Behavioral Health, the number of patients going to emergency departments for psychiatric services increased 42% over a recent three-year period. The problem is particularly serious in rural and remote areas where clinicians are scarce. In a recent Regroup survey, 62% of facilities said unmet patient need was their biggest challenge in delivering mental healthcare.

As health systems work to provide high-quality care while containing costs, more of them are looking beyond traditional in-person care delivery to innovative new models. By turning to telepsychiatry, these facilities can connect patients with preventive services, improve cost efficiencies and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.

In the latest version of our Sector Spotlight series, we focus on how telepsychiatry can deliver both clinical and operational benefits for hospitals and health systems.

Regroup recently presented at Zoom's user conference, Zoomtopia 2019. As part of a healthcare panel, Regroup's own Medical Director and SVP of Behavioral Health, Dr. Hossam Mahmoud discussed best practices for building, integrating and expanding telehealth solutions during a session titled: Taking your Telehealth program to Warp Speed.

From adopting value-based care to addressing clinician shortages, mental health programs across the country are facing a variety of clinical and operational pressures. As digital transformation reshapes healthcare delivery, telepsychiatry is rapidly gaining attention as a way to deliver quality behavioral health services efficiently and effectively. Regroup recently surveyed healthcare leaders about their current and future telepsychiatry plans, revealing how many are leveraging virtual care to meet both patient and organizational needs.

OSF HealthCare is a large regional health system comprised of 13 hospitals and just over 100 primary care, specialty, and urgent care clinics.  Included within these locations are three critical access hospitals, three Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and many other sites serving rural and semi-rural areas in Illinois and Michigan. Our recent webinar highlights Regroup's partnership with OSF and how they've implemented integrated telepsychiatry services to improve access to behavioral health services. 

Read on to download the webinar and see how Dr. Hossam Mahmoud and Luke Raymond, Director of Behavioral Health at OSF answered the questions asked during the live event.

Quality of Mental Health Clinicians and Operations Drives Better Outcomes

If your organization is considering a telepsych program or has already added telepsych services, the key to long-term success is establishing and maintaining a high level of quality. By combining the right clinicians, tools and processes, healthcare organizations can improve outcomes for both their patients and their own businesses.

So how can organizations ensure they’re delivering quality care? Successful programs should enhance in-person care, not replace it, with clinicians working closely with existing care teams to treat patients. Integrating telepsychiatry with your existing services allows you to streamline operations and have greater oversight and quality control. Here are five elements your telepsych program should consist of in order to ensure the delivery of high-quality mental health care.

For many Native Americans, a history of trauma, poverty and other factors have made mental health issues a way of life. Native Americans are 1.5 times more likely to experience mental illness than the general population, and three times more likely to compound the problem with substance abuse. For Native Americans living in tribal communities, the situation is made worse by the fact that access to treatment is often hours away.

Micah Nickey knows firsthand the difficulties these communities face, and the role that telepsychiatry can play in helping to solve them. A Sicangu Lakota and an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, his extensive behavioral health background includes his role as behavioral health director for the Forest County Potawatomi Health and Wellness Center. It was during his time there that he was first exposed to Regroup, when the company was hired to provide telepsych services. Micah recently joined Regroup, where he felt he could have an even greater impact in delivering quality care to Native Americans across the country.

Here, Nickey discusses how telepsychiatry can help tribal populations access much-needed, high-quality mental health care, and how these communities can tailor care to their specific needs.

David Cohn, Regroup Founder & CEO, Matthew Slovitt and Bob Silverstein recently joined other healthcare leaders at the 2019 InTouch Telehealth Innovation Forum to hear from organizations that are on the leading edge of integrating innovative processes and models of care delivery.  Read some key points made from various leaders as they gave their perspective on the future telehealth.

Reliable technology can be the difference between effective telehealth solutions and low-quality patient care. As a leading provider of integrated telemental health services to organizations across the country, Regroup delivers top-tier performance through all technical elements of its care delivery model, including the secure, HIPAA-compliant RegroupConnect virtual care platform. With Zoom as the platform's foundation, this ensures uninterrupted patient experiences and high-quality care to drive better clinical outcomes. 

Read the case study to see how Regroup has leveraged Zoom's high-performing, compliant videoconferencing and meeting technology to deliver over 100,000 patient sessions annually.

For healthcare organizations that offer mental health services, the challenges of psychiatrist staffing are all too familiar. Faced with a nationwide shortage of behavioral health providers, many healthcare facilities can’t hire fast enough to keep up with growing patient demand. Even among facilities that recruit behavioral health clinicians successfully, the process is often a big drain on time and resources, with the search for a psychiatrist costing $30,000 on average.

As behavioral health programs mature, these challenges can become even more complex for organizations. Many find they need clinicians with highly specialized skills to treat specific patients or conditions, making it especially difficult to find the right hire. Meanwhile, in-house staff can become overwhelmed with needs they may not be well-equipped to handle, from substance abuse to eating disorder issues. That’s where telepsychiatry comes in.

Primary Care Doctors Can Partner with Telepsychiatrists for Mental Healthcare

As telepsychiatry continues to expand across healthcare settings, many primary care providers (PCPs) are seizing the opportunity to meet their patients’ behavioral health needs. With 90 million Americans living in mental health shortage areas, a PCP is often their only connection to the healthcare system.