The telepsychiatry landscape is undergoing rapid transformation, with projections indicating significant market growth in the coming years. In this comprehensive analysis by The Business Research Company, Iris Telehealth is recognized among the key players driving innovation and accessibility in virtual mental health services. The article explores emerging trends, market forecasts, and the pivotal role of telepsychiatry in addressing global mental health challenges.
Iris Telehealth CEO Andy Flanagan discusses how telepsychiatry can bridge the gap, providing timely, specialized care and alleviating pressure on emergency departments. Discover how integrating telepsychiatry into crisis response systems can enhance patient outcomes and system efficiency.
Our CEO Andy Flanagan’s latest article in Healthcare Business Today explores how AI risk stratification is revolutionizing resource allocation in behavioral health, ensuring patients in crisis receive care based on clinical need rather than when they call. Learn how forward-thinking health systems are already implementing these technologies to reduce ED visits and optimize provider capacity by 2025.
Read the full article at Healthcare Business Today.
The shortage of mental health providers across the country — especially for children and adolescents — is well documented. While there are a variety of proposals that may increase access to behavioral healthcare providers, many of these proposals don’t address the geographical imbalance of child psychiatrists in the workforce; some 70% of U.S. counties have no child psychiatrists. This means that many families still face months-long wait times for new appointments and substantial travel barriers to see a provider in person.
To address this issue, organizations across the U.S. are partnering with telepsychiatry companies to improve access to mental healthcare in their communities, providing care to those who need it most.
Hathaway-Sycamores Child and Family Services — a CMHC with a mission to cultivate hope and resilience to enrich the well-being of children, adults, families, and communities — is one of many organizations that was challenged to continue providing behavioral healthcare despite a shortage of pediatric psychiatrists. With the pandemic and the introduction of social-distancing requirements, telepsychiatry was a valuable tool to ensure that they could still provide access to mental healthcare to their LA-based patient population. Their long-standing partnership with Iris Telehealth enabled Hathaway-Sycamores to adapt and scale their provision of mental health services.
A key benefit? Under a telehealth model, cancellation and no-show rates for appointments have declined from about 25% to about 15%.
A safe, virtual space can be the bridge that makes quality healthcare — behavioral or otherwise — accessible to underserved communities. For the portion of patient populations that can be safely treated remotely, telepsychiatry is here to stay.
To learn more about the partnership between Hathaway-Sycamores and Iris, you can find the original article here. To learn more about Hathaway-Sycamores, you can visit their website here. And of course, if you’re interested in learning more about how Iris Telehealth can partner with your organization to increase access to mental health services in your community, feel free to contact us in the form below!
Finding high quality psychiatrists and behavioral healthcare providers can be a challenge. Shiawassee Health & Wellness successfully navigated that challenge and hired a new, full-time psychiatrist, but with a twist: he lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Shiawassee County is federally designated as a health professional shortage area (HPSA), where primary and dental care providers — let alone mental health care providers — can be difficult to access. SHW (formerly known as Shiawassee County Community Mental Health Authority) is the county’s designated Community Mental Health Services Program, with the responsibility for serving the specialty behavioral healthcare needs of county residents. The patient population includes adults and children with developmental disabilities, adults with serious mental illness, and children with serious emotional disturbances.
In order to address the needs of their patient population, the nonprofit health organization introduced telepsychiatry by partnering with Iris Telehealth. Telepsychiatry services from companies like Iris enable medical facilities like SHW to hire high quality psychiatric providers who might not be willing to move to areas where facilities are located while reducing the transportation barrier many patients face. SHW and Iris share a vision of expanding telehealth to smaller communities to provide underserved communities with access to the best behavioral healthcare specialists.
To learn more about the partnership between Iris Telehealth and SHW, read the full article here.
Telemedicine experienced a massive surge in interest when the pandemic hit in 2020. Mental healthcare — where the demand in services has long been higher than the supply of available appointments — has experienced an uptick in demand. Across the country, over 90% of mental health visits were occurring virtually. The increase in demand forced many organizations to face major challenges to scale their ability to provide these virtual services. Among these challenges is staffing with top-notch psychiatrists and other mental healthcare providers.
Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) and Community Health Clinics (CHCs) across the U.S. reported a drop in the number of client visits during quarantine. However, Aroostook Mental Health Center (AMHC) successfully ramped up its use of telemedicine to increase the number of its client visits by 20%.
While AMHC continued to offer in-clinic appointments, their early adoption of telehealth enabled them to scale their existing practice to more effectively provide patient care. By partnering with Iris Telehealth, a telepsychiatry company that carefully matches providers to the clinics and hospitals that need them, AMHC was able to also offer virtual mental health services to patients through HIPAA-compliant video conferencing and telephone calls. AMHC’s use of telepsychiatry solved for the challenges in recruiting an onsite provider willing to relocate to a more rural area.
To learn more about how AMHC used telemedicine to improve access to mental healthcare, you can read the original article here. If you’d like learn more about partnering with Iris to improve access to mental healthcare in your community, let us know in the form below!