Why Leveraging Virtual Behavioral Health Services Drives Patient Satisfaction in the ED

Identifying ways to address behavioral health needs and improve patient satisfaction in the emergency department (ED) is not only beneficial for your health system, but it’s also the right thing to do for patients.

If there isn’t adequate access to behavioral health services across your organization and within your community, patients may feel they have no choice but to seek behavioral health care in the ED. When that happens, ensuring your ED has adequate behavioral health resources to meet that patient demand can be a substantial difference-maker for patient satisfaction, quality, and even length of stay.

Health systems have an opportunity to help patients get the quality, life-changing care they need and deserve.

By embracing the patient and leveraging virtual behavioral health services to ensure they’re well taken care of during their time in the ED and have a good plan after discharge, health systems are better positioned to retain patients and help them throughout their healthcare journey (even beyond the ED).

54% of U.S. hospitals have no psychiatrist available for ED and inpatient consultation services

In 2022, 6 million people sought care for mental, behavioral, or neurodevelopmental disorders in the ED.

A study from the Mayo Clinic on specialty psychiatric services in emergency departments found the following results:

  • 59% of hospitals say they transferred a psychiatric patient to a different hospital due to lack of available services
  • Only 27% of hospitals had consultation services available for psychiatric patients
  • 54% of U.S. hospitals had no psychiatrist available for medical ED and inpatient consultation services

With the high demand for behavioral health care in the hospital setting, it is critical your organization provides quick access to quality care.

 

“For many health systems, the emergency department is becoming like an inpatient unit. For organizations that partner with a telehealth solution like ours, patients can be seen by a psychiatrist or a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) in less than an hour of when they present to the ED.
From there, we can work with the ED staff on starting or restarting necessary medications or guiding the course of treatment – which makes for a better patient experience and smoother workflows for the on-site care teams.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer

 

Across the board, patients report high satisfaction rates with telehealth.

For example, an article from the American Medical Association, cites 79% of patients were very satisfied with the care they received during their last telehealth visit, with 73% saying they would continue using virtual care in the future.

60% of patients said they waited 10+ hours to be seen by a mental health professional in the ED

Today, patients seeking behavioral health support in the ED spend a lot of time waiting and don’t always receive adequate information or resources to support them long-term and prevent them from returning to the ED.

A survey from the National Alliance on Mental Illness found that patients with psychiatric emergencies in the ED experienced the following:

  • 60% of patients waited 10+ hours to be seen by a mental health professional in the ED
  • 54% said there was no information given to them about prescribed medications
  • 65% were not given information about outpatient or community care

Anecdotally, patients also reported feeling very isolated and not taken seriously in their ED experience.

If you’re looking for ways to improve the patient experience, increasing access to dedicated behavioral health services and specialists in the ED is a positive step in the right direction to ensuring patient needs are being addressed.  

Virtual care helps reduce the amount of time patients spend in the ED

Patient satisfaction stems from the ability to address specific needs and track progress to ensure important metrics are being met.  

On the operational side, having insights into how your clinicians are performing can help optimize care, ensure quality treatment, and help keep patients safe.

Through our strategic approach to quality management, we’ve helped our partners reduce the length of stay in their MedSurg units by 0.5 days, increased ED discharge rates from 55% to 62%, and reduced their length of stay in the ED from 12 to 9 hours.

Overall, our partners have seen an 80% improvement in ED throughput by leveraging a strategy that ensures patients get to the right level of care and have the behavioral health care they need to address their specialty behavioral health needs.

Get started with behavioral health integration

Every hospital’s central value boils down to caring for patients and ensuring they’re well taken care of – body and mind. Whether your ED has leveraged virtual before or is looking for innovative solutions that will support patients long-term – there’s no bad place to start.

If you’d like to learn more about how Iris Telehealth can help integrate behavioral health into your organization, please contact us today.

2025 CMS Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule: Key Changes to Behavioral Health and Telehealth

On November 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released their 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule through a comprehensive fact sheet that breaks down all the planned changes across the health care system.  

Here’s a look at how these changes will affect the behavioral health and telehealth landscape as we turn the corner into 2025 along with some insights from our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Thomas Milam, on how we can interpret these changes.

Average payment rates under the PFS will be reduced by 2.93% in CY 2025

While the new ruling contains several positive updates, the PFS reduction in payment rates by 2.93% may have cascading impacts across your organization that you may have to prepare for.

While a decrease wasn’t unexpected, it still may present challenges for those affected as this reduction will put less money in the hands of healthcare workers and their organizations.

“Everything we do in medicine has a relative value unit (RVU) assigned to it – every procedure and every patient encounter – so even an incremental decrease is less money going to doctors, hospitals, and facilities during a time where there’s a lot more patients and higher acuity.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer

 

 

CMS will preserve and expand the scope of and access to telehealth services

Without congressional action, the pre-COVID-19 statutory limitations in place for Medicare telehealth services will resume, including geographic restrictions and service limitations in which practitioners can provide telehealth services.

CMS has expressed intentions to preserve important flexibilities in their authority and expand the scope of, and access to, telehealth services. However, we’re still waiting on the supportive data and legislative updates that will be critical to such efforts.

“The CMS Behavioral Health Strategy has a lot of important initiatives where telehealth could play a major role in keeping patients well and out of hospitals and emergency departments. We have every reason to believe CMS, patients, and providers want to continue leveraging telehealth in patient care–we’ve been doing it, and we should keep doing it.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer

 

 

CMS is leaning into greater suicide prevention and flexibilities for OUD treatment

To expand access to behavioral health care, CMS is taking action towards safety planning. When properly executed, this planning can go a long way towards preventing suicide.

CMS is currently finalizing separate coding and payment under the PFS describing safety planning interventions for patients in crisis, including those with suicidal ideation and those at risk of suicide or overdose.

“CMS is leaning in more to support efforts to identify people at risk for suicide, and they plan to have additional reimbursement modeling for services to move towards a zero-suicide policy. Suicide rates remain high in all age groups, and among veterans as well, so we should all be doing everything we can to screen, intervene, and prevent such loss of life — telehealth will continue to play a big role in such efforts.
There will be additional G-codes in the system that will cover some additional services for suicide screening, assessment, and management in keeping with the success of the 988-suicide hotline.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer

 

CMS is also finalizing telecommunication technology flexibilities for Opioid Use Disorders treatment services – allowing people to receive care without an in-person visit.

 

“I was pleased to see there are still a lot of flexibilities around opiate treatment programs in the 2025 PFS. The high risk of intentional and accidental deaths associated with opiates and the fentanyl crisis warrant continued efforts in early screening, management and prevention strategies.
The opiate epidemic is still a major concern for CMS and among health care providers, so allowing flexibilities to  se telehealth and other technologies to keep patients engaged in ongoing treatment is imperative.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer

 

Prior to the COVID-19 PHE, if someone needed buprenorphine to stay well and avoid withdrawal and relapse, they had to go to a clinic in person, attend to their appointments for med management and therapy, and get drug screens – everything had to be done in person. 

Now, a lot of this process takes place over the phone and helps lower the risk that someone might relapse or overdose. As policies around this patient population evolve, it’s critical that CMS and SAMSHA continue working together to recognize the vulnerability and importance of people struggling with opiate use disorder.

New G-codes can help promote provider collaboration

CMS is finalizing six G-codes that will be billed by people who have limitations in their statute to services for diagnosis and treatment, mental illness, psychologists, social workers and management. These codes will mirror current interprofessional consultation and CBT codes.

There’s also more recognition in healthcare that provider communication around patient care is of high importance.

For example, eConsults weren’t previously paid for, but now there’s recognition that collaboration is real work and adds value for patients and providers. Reimbursing healthcare providers for their interprofessional communication and identifying the work that different care teams are engaged in together to keep patients well is an important step in the right direction.

CMS also shared they are finalizing a policy to continue allowing direct supervision via interactive, real-time audio-visual platforms to extend various types of supervision for providers who may require it such as like nurse practitioners, therapists, physician’s assistants.

While there seems to be hesitancy around using audio-only modalities for supervision and care delivery, they will hopefully still be viable options given the rural locations of so many patients and providers in the US.

Where Iris fits in

At Iris, we believe in a future that helps more people get the high-quality behavioral health they need and deserve – regardless of where they live. Virtual care is an important part of the future of healthcare and will continue to increase access to care for those who need it most.

Want to learn more about what the final rule means for your organization? Reach out to talk to someone today – you can contact us here!

You can also get more information and read more about the new CMS rule here.  

How Integrating Behavioral Health Can Improve Women’s Health Service Lines

Behavioral health integration is a crucial part of ensuring holistic care in women’s service lines. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), among women with mental health conditions, 27% have a serious mental illness and 20% suffer from mood or anxiety disorders during pregnancy.

In a webinar hosted by Becker’s Hospital Review, healthcare leaders from Carilion Clinic dove into how they’re approaching behavioral health in their women’s service lines, shared best practices for integration, and offered strategies for better patient outcomes.

Carilion Clinic has taken steps to integrate behavioral health services into their women’s health service lines, and Dr. Jennifer Wells, reproductive psychiatrist and Director of Women’s Mental Health Services, and Dr. Jaclyn Nunziato, OBGYN and Executive Director of Huddle Up Moms, shared how they think about ensuring all patients have access to care that’s trauma informed and culturally sensitive. Please read below for a breakdown of the key insights they shared during that conversation.

Untreated behavioral health conditions can have negative ramifications on clinical outcomes

As an OBGYN, Dr. Nunziato shared that mental health was never in her training, yet behavioral health conditions are more commonly found in women than other common illnesses covered in regular screenings.

“I found patients I was seeing for years were sitting on these mental health issues, everyday struggles, and transitions throughout their reproductive journey. I would hear time and time again [patients saying], ‘Nobody’s ever asked me how I’m doing […] mentally.’ I found screening them even at a routine visit has really opened my eyes to the need and to the lack of resources.”
Dr. Jaclyn Nunziato, OBGYN, Executive Director of Huddle Up Moms

 

Dr. Nunziato went on to say that untreated behavioral health conditions have negative ramifications on clinical outcomes and that gaining a better level of expertise in mental health has made her a better provider.

Reproductive psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Wells, Carilion Clinic’s Director of Women’s Mental Health Services shared that she has witnessed mental health stigma decreasing, a credit to Carilion Clinic and having providers who are more open to behavioral health.

In previous times, Dr. Wells said people would show up and talk about their depression, but not mention things like substance use.

“As we’ve grown in our ability to talk about diseases and provide education to the people around us, it’s allowed this great evolution of how we think about mental illness. And now I think some of that is happening in the perinatal space.”
Dr. Jennifer Wells, Director of Women’s Mental Health Services at Carilion Clinic

 

She says persons of reproductive age and parenting women are more comfortable sharing their fears and concerns about being a parent. Dr. Wells also shared that the ability to express these fears and concerns opens the opportunity to educate, listen, and find better ways to help people manage their anxiety and depression.

Acknowledging that hormonal shifts are important markers of a women’s health journey can help reframe the way we approach conversations about behavioral health

When defining the difference between “women’s health” and “women’s mental health,” Dr. Wells shares that they’re intimately connected.

“Women’s health has come to the forefront because we recognize the journey of a woman through her life is characterized by significant hormonal changes. Hormonal shifts are responsible for many downstream effects like mood disorders.”
Dr. Jennifer Wells, Director of Women’s Mental Health Services at Carilion Clinic

 

Dr. Wells also shares that a woman’s life takes a dramatic shift every 10, 15, and 20 years, which can create a shifting of mental health. This journey starts during adolescence, matriculating through middle school to high school, where someone might experience premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Then in fertile years, a woman might experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.

If a woman undergoes fertility treatment or infertility, they might experience depression or anxiety. Then, there’s the postpartum period that brings a greater risk for mood and anxiety disorders. Then, there’s menopause.

When discussing hormonal shifts, there are also important considerations around stigma. Dr. Nunziato shared that acknowledging hormonal shifts places value on where a woman is in her journey, where in another time, it was seen as something that was “all in someone’s head.”

Dr. Wells said that would like to see the conversation move beyond a woman being histrionic and can’t control their hormones to the idea that hormones are neuroactive steroids that change the biochemistry and neuroreceptors of someone’s brain, making mood disorders more common.

“Hormones are very real, and we need to talk about them – it’s a part of a woman’s life. Women live their lives through connection and emotional ties to other people. As these connections change through life, it’s no surprise that it happens concurrently with hormonal changes that exacerbate and ameliorate mood disorders.”
Dr. Jennifer Wells, Director of Women’s Mental Health Services at Carilion Clinic

 

 

How to integrate behavioral health into women’s health

Dr. Nunziato said the first thing a provider can do to integrate behavioral health is to become more comfortable in the mental health space and talking about mental health with your patients, noting, “You are somebody that values mental health and is willing to ask about it, provide screenings, be more educated about it. The more you do it, the more you gain a network and find the resources available in your area.”

When considering at what point a provider should refer to a specialist, Dr. Wells says it depends on provider comfort, sharing that each provider comes from a different training background with varying familiarity on certain conditions, like PMDD or major depressive disorder.

For providers, she recommends getting more comfortable talking about mental health and increasing their knowledge base. Dr. Wells also shared that most people are comfortable prescribing an SSRI, but if it goes beyond their scope and level of comfortability, they can reach out for an e-consult.

“The high prevalence of mental illness and substance use disorders in America can be co-occurring, including conditions like anxiety and depression, ADHD, bipolar, and schizophrenia. We know that primary care providers, family doctors, and pediatricians are at the frontlines, but often need support from mental health experts for medication management, therapy, or substance use issues.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer, Iris Telehealth

At Carilion Clinic, they have e-consult services built into their systems, and providers can reach Dr. Wells via calling, texting, or a referral to her clinic. There are also perinatal mental health lines where providers can get connected to a specialist within 30 minutes.

In Virginia, Dr. Wells and Dr. Nunziato are heading their state’s perinatal mental health line called “VMAP for Moms+,” designed to help providers caring for pregnant persons or those contemplating pregnancy. These lines help create networks of good information that’s evidence-based and data driven.

Dr. Nunziato shared that she was seeing wait lists from six months to a year and to help increase access, they leveraged a risk-stratification approach. She noted that not everyone needs to see a psychiatrist and might do great with a peer support group or rely on their own OBGYN.

Addressing gender in women’s healthcare

When discussing women’s health, it’s important to consider all facets of the female experience, including transgender care.

For Dr. Wells, who often works with transgender patients, she shared that her practice is intentional about using the right terminology and understand this population faces higher rates of substance use disorder, abuse, and intimate partner violence.

Dr. Nunziato added for transgender patients trying to get pregnant or going through menopause, they’re also dealing with physiologic changes and stressors that need to be addressed and often aren’t recognized.

“It’s up to us to implore our teams to be accountable, respectful, and as open as possible. When I have transgender patients who are getting pregnant, it’s a great way to remind my staff (from the front desk all the way to the person doing their transvaginal ultrasound) that we need to be mindful and respectful of everyone’s individual needs.”
Dr. Jaclyn Nunziato, OBGYN, Executive Director of Huddle Up Moms

 

Dr. Wells shared that as the Director of Women’s Health she understands that “women” doesn’t always apply and it’s important to find alternatives. Dr. Wells goes onto say that she tries to elevate her own vocabulary, be sensitive to the person in front of her (however they identify) and educate herself on how best to meet their needs.

Get started with behavioral health integration

We are so grateful for the time Dr. Wells and Dr. Nunziato shared with us. Thank you for your partnership and for all the incredible work you are all doing to expand behavioral health to your community!

Weren’t able to make it to the webinar? You can catch the full video here. If you’d like to learn more and figure out the next steps to integrating behavioral health into your women’s health service lines, you can contact us here.

How to Onboard Virtual Providers Seamlessly into your Care Team

When integrating virtual providers into your organization to augment your behavioral health strategy it’s critical to ensure the onboarding of those virtual providers is as seamless as possible. Successful onboarding sets the tone for the entire relationship and working with an experienced partner that manages the process can be a major benefit.

In this blog, we’ll review tried and true strategies our partners have leveraged to effectively onboard providers for long-term success.

1. Assess your resources and lean on your partner

Before bringing on virtual providers, it can be helpful to assess your current onboarding resources and workflows. It might also be helpful to talk with your on-site providers about what to expect and discuss how your new providers will benefit your organization overall.

“We thought in the long term, it was going to create a situation where we could offer more flexibility when looking at full-time staff members. Even if they weren’t working full-time in a virtual capacity, they would have that tool as part of their tool belt. 
So, whether it was because of illness or convenience, it’s an important arrow in our quiver to be able to expand virtual health to include providing services on the inpatient end.”
Dr. James Anderson, Chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Basset

Partnering with a behavioral health organization that takes care of logistical steps in your onboarding process can save you a lot of time and resources. For instance, at Iris Telehealth, our Practice Managers (PMs) help manage the entire onboarding process and the day-to-day logistics after onboarding completes.

Our PMs ensure providers feel supported throughout their onboarding process and have resources they need, whether that’s the right equipment, or assistance with things like the EMR, or general support.

2. Check all your credentialing boxes to ensure desired start date

Onboarding the right provider types and specialists might mean working with a provider who lives in another state. When that happens, you may need to allocate more time to that provider’s licensing and credentialing processes. In some circumstances, credentialing can take months and delay a provider’s start time, so it’s best to get started as soon as possible to avoid any road bumps.

When we’re working to onboard providers, our credentialing team stays in close contact with clinicians, providing follow-up and retrieving documentation to ensure the process moves forward as efficiently as possible.

Our Medical Staff Services (MSS) team can estimate the length of time credentialing  will take based on your state’s requirements and provide an accurate start date.

Iris Providers Share Their Experience with Virtual Care

 

 

At Iris, we’ve achieved 96% of on-time start dates, ensuring clinicians can start providing care as soon as possible.

 

 

 

3. Conduct a tech check to ensure everything runs smoothly

Working in a virtual environment versus an in-person one comes with unique considerations. For example, virtual providers may require special equipment or you may need to ensure they have seamless access to your EMR. For successful onboarding, it’s crucial to conduct tech checks and have trial run throughs. While many providers are familiar with virtual care, some may need assistance.

When you’re working with patients virtually, it’s important to ensure everything goes smoothly. For example, providers should confirm their audio is working properly, their backgrounds are appropriate, and there aren’t any interruptions.

“We have our systems in place in terms of our morning rounds. We have the computer system up and running. We recently just got a fish-eye lens camera, so I have better visibility of seeing everyone in the morning meetings, which has been fantastic.”
Dr. Tisa Ayuso, Virtual Medical Director, Basset Health Network

 

Ensuring your processes are thorough is extremely important and partnering with an organization that values quality is crucial. At Iris, we run all tech checks for providers and deliver 24/7 IT support during onboarding and beyond – your virtual provider is never left alone to deal with technical snags and your on-site team’s resources aren’t eaten up by troubleshooting technology.

Along with technical checks, confirming familiarity with the EMR is also important. Our PMs ensure they know as much about your EMR as the provider does – that way they can be of assistance if ever needed.

4. Create a trusted training plan and prep for necessary steps

Upon your provider’s first day, there will be a lot for them to learn, and having a structured plan in place can be incredibly useful. Whether that looks like scheduling intro meetings for them with on-site providers or letting them explore the EMR before they see their first patient, giving them tools to settle to their new role can be a huge help.

It’s also helpful to think of your provider as you would as an on-site team member – ensuring they understand the workflows and inviting them to meetings.

When creating your onboarding plan, here are a few trainings you might consider:

  • IT orientation
  • HR orientation
  • Support staff introductions
  • EMR training
  • Conducting a dry run

At Iris,  we account for these trainings and considerations when we help onboard a new provider. We also go over important trainings like crisis overview, data entry, appointment scheduling, emergency protocols, and much more.

Want some extra help with onboarding? Here’s where Iris fits in.

With all the logistical considerations that come along with onboarding a virtual provider, having a partner that’s been there before can serve as a huge advantage.

Want to learn more about how Iris can help your organization make provider onboarding seamless? Contact us today!

How Virtual Care Can Support Value-Based Care

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

How Telehealth Creates Safety and Comfort for Patients and Providers

Iris clinicians facilitate top-quality behavioral health care – averaging 2.3M patient encounters every year. We are proud of the work our providers do every day to fill care gaps and support healthcare organizations across the country by providing their communities with timely access to exceptional care.

Every month, we sit down with one of our providers to spotlight the amazing work they’re doing every day and the impact they’re making on the communities they serve. This month, we’re sitting down to talk with Dr. Sean Hawkins!

Q. How does telehealth compare to in-person work?

A. The first thing on the top of the list is the contrast from where I was over a year ago – which was commuting probably an hour and a half a day. Then, there’s the extra 20 or 30 minutes you tack on to either end to make sure you’re not going to be late – accounting for traffic and accidents.

I really don’t miss the commute and I’m grateful to have more control over my day. I can customize more of my day and have more flexibility with my schedule. If I start my day an hour or two before my workday starts, I know exactly when I can sit down and when I can be there for my family. All those things are nice.

Q. How does telehealth support holistic care?

A. I have a nurse that’s present 90% of the time and a medical assistant that’s available other times. We see them at the beginning of every shift and in between every patient. We keep in regular contact. We also develop relationships with most of the employees.

There are behavioral health techs or care assistants present 24 hours a day. There are certainly people that I haven’t met that are overnight, but I do get to meet a large majority of the day shift employees, and I have some amount of communication with different people, even if I haven’t met them.

We review notes together. It feels like being part of a team with eight therapists – our nurse, a few medical assistants, and the leadership team. We have regular communication with that whole team, which I really enjoy.

At the top of the list is the other Iris psychiatrist – I get to see them face-to-face in a team meeting each week. We’re frequently talking on this side about different issues that come up.

Q. How does telehealth foster connection with patients virtually?

A. Telehealth helps patients in expected and unexpected ways. We do some outpatient visits – I think everybody learned a bit about that during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for me, it’s always a surprise when I’m introduced to somebody’s significant other, their family, dogs or the area where they live in a way that I never would’ve seen previously.

Additionally there are a lot of people who have been through traumatic events with men where they wouldn’t want to be in a closed room with a male practitioner and would not feel comfortable.

In fact, a lot of people I worked with in-person, would come in for a first visit and then back out the door and say, “I didn’t realize you were going to be a man. I can’t do this.”

I think that has been a lot better virtually to the extent that part of my first conversation with people is letting them know about boundaries, and if they’re not feeling safe or comfortable, I let them know they can always leave the room, and I’ll disappear. But if they’re not comfortable doing that, they could close the laptop.

There’s always that level of comfort for some people who have been through really difficult things like abuse and don’t feel as comfortable sharing a physical space with someone.

People who receive dialectical behavioral therapy can struggle with boundaries. It can be uncomfortable being a male provider in a small, closed room with no windows with a client who may have trouble with boundaries. There’s comfort on both ends knowing there’s no concern about some of the obvious things – where I might otherwise feel the need to have a chaperone present just for everybody’s comfort.

Q. What is the most rewarding part of your job?

A. The most rewarding parts are the same things that would be rewarding in person – seeing people make changes in their lives that are important to them over time. And feeling like I have some part of that is always nice. It’s mostly about an overwhelming sense of gratitude that someone opens up a part of their life where they’re vulnerable and where they’re trying to change or can change while I’m present.

Q. Why do you think telehealth is the future of mental health care?

A. The first thing that occurs to me is the geographical barriers. There are parts of the country where it’s hard to recruit psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. Telehealth helps cut out a two-hour commute or help patients overcome cost prohibitive transportation.

A lot of patients are working long days, and the last thing I want to do is tack my visit onto the to the end of that and have them drive an unsafe two hours. I think for some people it’s safety in a literal sense.

Telehealth creates greater comfort than patients would have if they came into a public setting. There’s also stigma and shame that can come along with in-person care. I think it’s a lower energy barrier for people and there’s a ton of reasons why telehealth is here to stay and I’m glad to be a part of it.

Q. Anything you’d like to share about your experience with Iris?

A. I’m really glad to be here. This is a dream job for me in a lot of ways.

At Iris, we believe our providers should be respected, valued, and applauded for the work they do, and we couldn’t be prouder to say, “thank you” to our very own Dr. Hawkins. If you’d like to learn more about working for Iris Telehealth, contact us today.

How Virtual Clinic Integrates Across Healthcare Organizations’ Unique Patient Journeys

 

Access to behavioral health care continues to be a significant challenge across the country, with  50% of behavioral health patients being treated in primary care   While primary care providers want to know more about behavioral health and help their patients, they don’t always have the time or specialized knowledge to treat complex cases.

Without dedicated providers or the ability to risk stratify or prioritize care, healthcare organizations may struggle to ensure patients receive the appropriate level of care in a timely manner.

For those healthcare organizations, a comprehensive, endlessly adaptable care model like Virtual Clinic can help a patient receive the holistic behavioral health care they need while seamlessly integrating across their care continuum.  

Virtual Clinic embeds behavioral health specialists into your healthcare organization  

The Virtual Clinic adapts to meet your organization’s needs and acts as an extension of your care team, integrating seamlessly across your healthcare organization. The goal of this care model is to connect patients with the right provider at the right time, ensuring the most in need are first in line. 

Here’s how it works: Once a patient is referred, a licensed social worker conducts an intake to determine the appropriate level of care, whether the patient requires a psychiatrist, therapist, or both. This process, along with medication management and consults, is documented within the electronic health record (EHR) — providing real-time data access for your team.

Additionally, after the intake appointment, the LCSW will schedule the patient’s next appointment.

 

 

Virtual Clinic providers are also available for consultations, working alongside your healthcare organization to stabilize patients and facilitate appropriate transition back to their primary care provider.

 

 

 

We help support your team and develop the pathways most meaningful to your patient population – whether they’re a new mother, an oncology patient, or pediatric patient.

Virtual Clinic gives your patients what they need, so they don’t seek care elsewhere

Economic feasibility and program scalability are essential to a healthcare organization’s approach to behavioral health. With Virtual Clinic, healthcare organizations only pay for patient encounters, aligning costs with utilization. Because of our commitment to quality and belief in this program, we deliver this model at risk to help ensure a scalable and sustainable solution for your healthcare organization.

“The benefit of having a quality management solution in place at your healthcare organization is the ability to look at a patient’s health outcomes across all specialties and see where there may be intersections between how specialties are working together and where opportunities to collaborate may lie.”
Yara Nielsenshultz, RN, MS, CPHQ, Executive Director of Quality

Additionally, with nearly 56% of Americans seeking mental health care and 74% expressing concerns about accessibility, offering behavioral health services can be a key differentiator for your healthcare organization. Wherever your focus is across the continuum, Virtual Clinic ensures patients can get the specialized care they need at your healthcare organization—eliminating the need to seek care elsewhere.

This holistic approach enhances patient retention and satisfaction, generating word-of-mouth referrals and broader promotion of your services.

Virtual Clinic leverages AI to help healthcare organizations prioritize which patients need care first

The Virtual Clinic model has been trained to test for false positive and negatives, leveraging a healthcare organization’s existing and incoming data sets. This approach considers which patients are at most risk for escalating towards suicidal ideation or towards care in the ED.

“A solution like Virtual Clinic ensures behavioral health care is always available throughout every patient journey – whether that’s in primary care or women’s health, patients will get the support they need in a timely manner.” – Andy Flanagan, Chief Executive Officer

Want to learn more from Andy? Click here to read his take on the impact of Virtual Clinic.

By analyzing existing data sets, Virtual Clinic can direct your team to the patients who need immediate attention, reducing wait times and improving outcomes.

When changes in a patient’s condition occur, their provider can consult with a Virtual Clinic specialist to discuss care adjustments, such as medication changes, further enhancing quality of care.

Want to learn more about how we’re leveraging AI? Check out our Iris Insights blog here.

Where Iris Telehealth fits in

Iris Telehealth’s Virtual Clinic offers an adaptable, integrated solution that augments your healthcare organization’s operations and capacity. Our program is designed to be financially sustainable while creating lasting positive outcomes for your patients.

Ready to learn more? Contact us today to see how Virtual Clinic can enhance both patient and provider satisfaction while mitigating risk.

How Iris Insights Leverages Data to Make Meaningful and Actionable Change for Health Systems

High demand for psychiatric care can create challenges across a health system and hinder their ability to meet key goals and KPIs.

Additionally, behavioral health visits can occupy 42% more time than non-psychiatric visits and result in 24% more inpatient admissions.

Fortunately, leveraging data tracking and optimization to make meaningful change across your organization can help you meet key goals, improve patient care, and gain clarity on what actions your care team needs to take to reach their desired outcomes.

Iris Insights adds intelligence to patient outreach and improves engagement

Typically, in behavioral health outreach, there’s no real concept of acuity beyond what a provider specifies as urgent.

That’s what makes risk stratification an important component of an organization’s approach to behavioral health care. Iris Insights reviews a wide variety of data elements and identifies patients who have a likelihood of escalation. Then, we can provide outreach and engage those patients at highest risk of admission first, before they escalate.

Early identification helps avoid escalation, reduces costs, and improves the success of a hospital’s behavioral health program.

To help improve the effectiveness of this approach, Iris Insights visualizes the data in an easy-to-use platform. This platform enables organizations to view all their metrics, KPIs, and reports – everything they need to make sure their program is performing at the level they need for the best results.

Achieving clarity into your program’s performance is essential for success

Iris Insights is a HIPAA-compliant, secure platform that serves as a singular place for organizations to gain visibility into their behavioral health programs. For example, through the platform they can see referral status or where a patient is in their behavioral health journey.

Here are a few things a health system might need to look at when assessing their programs success:

  • What are the margins across health payers?
  • How do our metrics compare to national and regional benchmarks?
  • How optimized are our resources to maximize margins while maintaining SLAs?

Having this visibility into current performance and how an organization is stacking up compared to other health systems like theirs can help optimize the success of their behavioral health strategy.

Success also takes shape in change management. When combining the Iris management model and our high-quality providers, we can help drive continuous clinical improvement. In fact, healthcare organizations that have leveraged our partnership have seen a 38% depression symptom improvement and an 80% ED throughput improvement.

Having visibility into how your behavioral health services are performing can help you optimize where needed and make sure your patients are getting what they need from their care.

Data can be a valuable tool that enriches the patient experience

According to the National Committee for Quality Assurance, quality measures are urgently needed to help guide value-based payment models to support high-quality, equitable, and coordinated care.

Typically, when a patient has a behavioral health visit, they’re given take-home instructions to help assist in their treatment. However, there’s no real insight or engagement to see how the patient is doing until their next visit.

This lack of insight can hinder the team’s ability to adjust or be more proactive or reactive in the patient’s treatment.

Dr. Michael Lambert, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University shared to the American Psychological Association (APA) that 85% of therapists believed their patients improved, but research showed that only 40-60% improved. Dr. Lambert also shared therapists believed 3% of their patients deteriorated when in actuality, 5-10% of adults worsened while in therapy.

That’s where measurement-based care can help organizations visualize their clinical and operational data to help identify gaps like these. When healthcare organizations leverage effective behavioral health assessments, utilize technologies, and provide efficient and regular outreach, patients stay more engaged in their treatment. At Iris, we work closely with our clinical leadership to ensure we’re implementing workflows that deliver a more holistic approach to care.

Data tells a story, and providers can view trends over time — well before a patient comes in for their 90-day evaluation.

Putting patient data at the provider’s fingertips helps complete the picture of where a patient is in their behavioral health journey and improves the quality of care.

Iris Insights provides supports for a traditionally underserved part of the continuum of care

Building out a quality program can be costly and consume a lot of resources. However, leveraging a quality partnership can bolster your program with clinical expertise, covering infrastructure costs, and providing scalable behavioral health services.

With a platform like Iris Insights, your data is actionable and can help your organization make the most of your behavioral health program.

Additionally, as a behavioral health focused company, we take a conservative approach to technologies like AI and leverage them to decrease the risk of escalation and ensure patients aren’t falling through care gaps.

If you’d like to learn more about Iris Insights and how it can help your organization stay on track to meet your key goals and metrics, please don’t hesitate to reach out today! You can contact us here for more information.

How a Tailored Virtual Clinic Model Expands Access to Behavioral Health Services for Healthcare Organizations 

Integrating behavioral health into existing patient journeys, whether a patient just received a cancer diagnosis, is an expecting mother, or is experiencing escalating anxiety at a primary care appointment, is the right thing to do – for the patient and for the organization.   

At Iris Telehealth, we work with healthcare organizations to tailor programs that seamlessly integrate into their existing service lines to address population-specific needs and acuity levels.  

This approach to augmenting and building a tailored behavioral health program is what we call creating a “Virtual Clinic,” as it represents a seamless, comprehensive care solution that can be deployed wherever it’s needed – and we believe it’s the future of integrated behavioral health care. 

No two healthcare organizations have the same capabilities or needs 

The needs across organizations vary greatly depending on location, patient population, and access to behavioral health providers.  

That’s why, at Iris, our strategy is to meet organizations where they are and augment whatever components they have in place. Whether that’s a provider team, technology, or processes, we tweak and enhance what’s needed, but never throw out what’s working.  

In our experience, here are just a few examples of patient journeys an organization might look to address when customizing their behavioral health programs: 

  • Oncology care 
  • Women’s health  
  • Employee access programs  
  • Primary care integration  

Integrating behavioral health across all patient journeys can transform your organization and how it delivers care to its community.  

While in some instances we start from square one, other times we build on what an organization already has in place. Everyone’s path to meeting their patient’s behavioral health needs will look different.  

Questions to consider around care models, data analytics, and technology  

When customizing your behavioral health program for your patient’s needs, there are three components every organization should consider – the care model, data analytics, and technology to drive optimal patient engagement.  

Within each of these categories, you can tweak the ingredients to help ensure they fit what your organization needs.  

Here are a few questions and considerations you might start thinking through:  

The  right care model to use:  

  • What are the unique needs of this patient population?  Do they need 24/7 coverage?  What are the common acuity levels and diagnoses?   
  • What are the integration points with this behavioral health program and the broader organization?  How do we drive optimal transitions of care and collaboration?   
  • What provider licensures, types and specializations would best suit our needs?  

The right data to measure:  

  • What KPIs are critical to measure that will drive program operational, clinical and financial success?  
  • How do we capture and measure the critical variables and bring them together to ensure the data is visible and actionable?  
  • Would risk stratification of the patient population bring value to the program?    

The right technology to leverage:  

  • How do we leverage and optimize the existing EMR and technology to drive program success?  
  • Are there ways we should optimize and configure our EMR?  
  • Are there additional tools or solutions we should integrate into our ecosystem that would drive value? 
  • How are we engaging our patients and driving measurement-based care?  

Tailoring your behavioral health program starts by defining what success will look like for your organization. That’s why it’s important to consider what problems you’re solving for and looking at what solutions you already have in place.  

A Virtual Clinic model solves for all these considerations while delivering seamless behavioral health support  

The demand for behavioral health care is continuing to grow at a rate that outpaces the resources available to help. In fact, 40% of U.S. adults and adolescents with mental health conditions never get the care they need.  

A solution like Virtual Clinic ensures behavioral health care is always available throughout every patient journey – whether that’s in primary care or women’s health, patients will get the support they need in a timely manner.  

The Virtual Clinic also ensures that the healthcare organization caring for these patients also gets the support they need, too. By optimizing access and billing, ensuring top-of-license care, and driving behavioral health and physical care integration, organizations can reduce the total cost of care.  

Weaving behavioral care into physical health journeys creates seamless access and better outcomes.  

Tailored behavioral health program design in action with Geisinger Health  

Geisinger Health sought the help of Iris Telehealth to help increase access at scale to help their behavioral health patients across the care continuum.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Geisinger saw their behavioral health referrals increase at a fast rate, sometimes exceeding 300 referrals per day.  

Emphasizing the need for providers practicing at the top of their licenses and seeing an opportunity for several new provider roles, Iris developed a best-in-class behavioral health program.   

To support their needs, we created a care navigation assessment led by LCSWs to triage patients in Geisinger’s referral queue and deployed a dedicated team of psychiatrists, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners and licensed therapists ensure patients got to the right level of care in a timely manner.  

To read the full case study and see the results of work together, click this link.  

Define your needs and get your behavioral health program started with Iris  

Over the last ten years, we’ve been creating the behavioral health building blocks to snap into an organization’s existing program or help create what’s needed from scratch. With our best-in-class capabilities we help fill in the unique gaps of your organization and get your patients the care they need.  

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your organization tailor your behavioral health program, you can contact us here! 

How Investing in Behavioral Health Quality Initiatives Can Improve Health System Outcomes

A robust quality management program considers a patient’s care across the patient journey, encompassing multiple facets. By viewing elements of a patient’s care and measuring standards of care across this continuum, effective quality management enables organizations to improve patient outcomes.

When deployed correctly, a quality management program can improve outcomes related to:  

  • Patient volumes 
  • Provider efficiency 
  • Patient access 
  • Provider processes 
  • Patient experiences 
  • Financial success  

A quality management program can also enable organizations to assess transitions of care throughout the health system and into the community – for example, ensuring patients receive behavioral health follow-up after a related ER visit.

While making data actionable is a key goal for most health systems, it can be an intensive undertaking. Fortunately, leveraging tools like telehealth and partnering with organizations that specialize in quality management can be a big help.

In this blog, I’ll share my insights as Executive Director of Quality at Iris Telehealth and offer advice on how leveraging a strategic partnership can support a health system’s commitment to quality.

Looking at data through the lens of behavioral health helps identify correlations between condition 

Integrating behavioral health can often come with concerns around sustainability, but data shows that it can improve the patient’s overall health outcomes.

For example, the American Psychological Association (APA) highlights that behavioral conditions like depression and anxiety can worsen medical outcomes. They go on to say that integrating behavioral health care can help treat conditions like diabetes and improve medical adherence and delay the disease’s onset.

From a data standpoint, an organization can track a patient’s A1C data and see if it’s improving – they can even observe how it’s connected to something like their cardiovascular health or any number of other health conditions.

Pulling all that information together gives an organization the ability to identify where there might be correlations between conditions. Delving into this level of detail requires resources, and unfortunately, many health systems don’t have enough.

However, partnering with a quality-focused organization with behavioral health expertise can help your health system make the most of your data and set up effective reporting workflows to give a bigger picture of your behavioral health service line.

Figuring out the right reports for your goals will help your team effectively visualize your data   

Approaching your data through a quality management lens can help health systems understand how changes improve metrics or identify if a new solution is needed.  

At Iris, we help illustrate this data through customized reports. Here’s the approach we take when working with health systems: 

  1. Determine priorities: We review the health system’s determined priorities, see how they intersect with our focus, and assess what we can work on together.  
  1. Data compilation: Once we know what priorities and goals the health system wants to achieve, we provide them with visualizations of the data.  
  1. Assessment and collaboration: After providing the health system with data visualization, we analyze it together to identify opportunities for improvement and then work together to address those opportunities and make meaningful changes.  
  1. Tracking begins: We track how the data evolves to determine what actions have been effective or not and continue working to improve until the objective is met. 
  1. Sustaining change: We continue to monitor data even after we’ve met a target so we can make sure that success is sustained over time.  

One example of how we might leverage data to support a health system is through volume assessment. Let’s say an organization is evaluating whether to decrease therapy appointment times from 60 minutes to 45. Using a tandem measurement, such as performing depression screening consistently, can help assess whether and how the decrease in time affects the care processes as well as whether there is any effect on patient outcomes. Additionally, measuring patient satisfaction before and after the change in appointment timing can help organizations determine how it affects a patient’s perception of their care and the organization.  

Looking at these three factors together would enable us to see a full picture of the effect one change has on the entire patient care experience. Importantly, it also provides data that can help inform the organization’s analysis of return on investment.  

There are many factors that contribute to an affected metric – whether that be communication or even a complicated technology platform. Whatever the challenge may be, dedicated support can help assess the issue and come to a solution.  

Tracking quality data helps put patients first and helps determine if your solutions are financially sustainable 

Quality management is here to help people. However, an important thing to note is that we can’t really know if we’re taking care of them well unless we track the data. There must be some kind of measure — just like runners who look at their times or distance. How do they know that they can do a marathon if they’re not actually keeping track of their miles? 

On the financial side, when you look at a metric like no-shows, addressing challenges in this area can help improve sustainability. 

As another example, tracking depression screening scores using a validated tool, such as the PHQ-9, can provide objective data regarding a patient’s progress and can help inform their treatment plan. For example, if their depression screening results indicate improvement, it provides an opportunity to assess (with the patient) whether they can transition to less frequent visits or possibly even move on from therapy.  This tracking not only demonstrates to the provider and patient the progress a patient has made, it can also improve access for new patients by opening up slots in the provider’s schedule. 

Where Iris Telehealth fits in 

The benefit of having a quality management solution in place at your health system is the ability to look at a patient’s health outcomes across all specialties and see where there may be intersections between how specialties are working together and where opportunities to collaborate may lie. 

If you’d like to learn more about how quality management could benefit your health system, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. You can reach out to someone here!