Meeting the demand for mental health in primary care

Given the ever-growing need for mental health care in 2022, we recently expanded our solutions beyond eConsults to offer a new virtual collaborative care solution — BHcare. 

Today’s unprecedented demand for behavioral health and substance use services inspired us to build this innovative, practice-changing solution. BHcare enables primary care with a virtual psychiatrist to help deliver accurate diagnoses, treatment, and longitudinal management of patient populations using an evidence-based measurement approach.

The collaborative care model (CoCM) has been widely studied and shown to improve patient outcomes for up to 2x as many patients. Studies have also shown that $1 spent on collaborative care saves $6.50 in health care costs. 

When developing our behavioral health solution, we studied the gaps in primary care that exist when supporting patients with behavioral health. We reviewed existing collaborative care models and found that they were built to support practices who operate within a fee-for-service framework. So when developing BHcare we built a solution to seamlessly embed a virtual psychiatrist into a primary care team, utilizing our technology that was designed specifically for our value-based clients.  

BHcare is unique from other behavioral health solutions for primary care in the following ways:

Custom-built registry + collaborative workspace

• Existing patient registries often feature dated and difficult-to-use interfaces that fail to deliver an exceptional user experience. This can reduce utilization and impact quality of care.
• We surveyed our users and leaders in collaborative care to build our proprietary registry that features a world-class UX and is optimized for collaborative patient management.
• The registry is integrated with our case review platform and collaborative workspace so that your psychiatric partner works proactively and seamlessly with your behavioral health team.
• The registry features flagging and sorting to help Behavioral Care Managers effectively manage their caseload.

A cost-effective, scalable model built for a value-based organizations’ unique needs

• Our optimized and asynchronous workflow and platform significantly increase patient access and significantly decreases avoidable costs related to unnecessary outside referrals.
• We built a flexible and modular model to integrate with existing behavioral health resources and help build your organization’s capacity to treat behavioral health over time vs. becoming wholly reliant on an outside vendor.
• We can take a lightweight approach to your program or utilize a deep clinical integration model based on your needs.

A trusted, board-certified, psychiatric partner dedicated to your care team who:

• Is provided by RubiconMD and utilizes live case reviews, a collaborative workspace, and patient registry to help manage your patients.
• Partners closely with primary care physicians across your system of care, rather than a rotation of unknown psychiatrists, helping to build their capacity to treat behavioral health issues over time.
• Is board-certified behavioral health experts who are credentialed and licensed appropriately for each state of care. 

Enhances your organization’s clinical education and training

• Through weekly case reviews with the behavioral health team and physician-to-physician interventions, primary care teams are enhanced by a trusted psychiatric partner responsive to patients’ and PCPs’ needs.
• Monthly lectures and case application trainings are available to advance behavioral care managers in their clinical knowledge and achieve “treatment to target.”
• Clinicians can earn CME credits with eConsults and CoCM webinars (up to 20 hours per year)

The increasing volume of patients with behavioral health needs is putting pressure on primary care settings that are unequipped to keep up with the demand. BHcare bridges that gap to support clinicians through an evidence-based, proven, and scalable model that we can adapt for your needs to provide better longitudinal patient care.  

Schedule a demo of BHcare today to see it in action.

References:

1. Benefits of integration of behavioral health. Primary Care Collaborative. Accessed April 12, 2021. https://www.pcpcc.org/content/benefits-integration-behavioral-health
2. Goodrich, D. E., Kilbourne, A. M., Nord, K. M., & Bauer, M. S. (2013). Mental Health Collaborative Care and its Role in Primary Care Settings. Current Psychiatry Reports, 15(8). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-013-0383-2
3. American Psychiatric Association & Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. (2016). DISSEMINATION OF INTEGRATED CARE WITHIN ADULT PRIMARY CARE SETTINGS. https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/Professional-Topics/Integrated-Care/APA-APM-Dissemination-Integrated-Care-Report.pdf
4. Malowney M, et al. Psychiatric Services. 2014; doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201400051.