Kaiser Permanente’s Post

"Addressing this crisis requires growing our mental health workforce". This article outlines a number of very good strategies to strengthen the mental healthcare workforce. I would add the following: 1) Protect the exisiting workforce against #burnout 2) Equip the exisiting workforce with technology so that they spend most of their productive time with people rather than with admin tasks. 3) Use the same principles we use in Managed Healthcare and apply them in mental health, among them, deriving people to the most appropriate level of care, somewhat provoking specialization but also releasing time from those that can take the most complex cases etc. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, I would also hightlight the importance of reducing demand... and not only interventions at the supply level. I trust we can engage into conversations that lead to improvements in mental health of populations across! Feel free to comment and share your ideas. We need out-of-the-box solutions, especially in #mentalhealthcare!

🚨 Recent news underscores a crisis we can't ignore: our nation's dire shortage of mental health services. Kaiser Permanente was recently fined $200 million, emphasizing the urgent need for scalable solutions. From my journey in the mental healthcare delivery space, I've seen firsthand that collaborative care is not just an option, but a necessity. It's the most effective way to bridge the accessibility gap and offer quality care to those in need. We must rise to the challenge, innovate, and drive real change. 🌐 https://lnkd.in/g6gS9edj #MentalHealthMatters #HealthcareInnovation #CollaborativeCare #CoCM #MentalHealthCrisis

Dr Sebastian Rosenberg highlights the need for funding reform to address under-resourced, community-based, mental health services. Starting with what qualifies as out-of-hospital care under the National Health Reform Agreement. #mentalhealthsupport #communityhealth #healthcare #hospitalathome

Investing in mental health care coordination positively impacts individuals’ overall well-being, providing them with the best possible care and ensuring positive outcomes. It should be a critical component of coordinated healthcare pathways for health and social institutions. #healthcaretech #mentalhealth #seniorcare #homebasedcare #mentalhealthawareness #behavioralhealth

Investing in mental health care coordination positively impacts individuals’ overall well-being, providing them with the best possible care and ensuring positive outcomes. It should be a critical component of coordinated healthcare pathways for health and social institutions. #healthcaretech #mentalhealth #seniorcare #homebasedcare #mentalhealthawareness #behavioralhealth

Investing in mental health care coordination positively impacts individuals’ overall well-being, providing them with the best possible care and ensuring positive outcomes. It should be a critical component of coordinated healthcare pathways for health and social institutions. #healthcaretech #mentalhealth #seniorcare #homebasedcare #mentalhealthawareness #behavioralhealth

Embedding mental health care in primary care settings is imperative if access to services is to improve. However, this needs a major overhaul of the way healthcare is funded which in turn requires political will. This paper is a review of how integrating mental health care into general practices can work. https://lnkd.in/ghpj6zbh

The takeaway message from this Gallup survey is that Americans believe mental health treatment works, but that our system of care delivery stinks and is unaffordable. One consequence of the ACA mandate to drop preexisting condition exclusions has been the dramatic increase in deductibles, often amounting to thousands of dollars per person. Some health plans exclude primary care visits from deductibles but treat psychiatric and counseling visits the same as other medical specialists. One simple solution is for health plans to offer their members a certain number of mental health visits per year which are not subject to the deductible. This could get more patients "in the door" so that their needs could be more fully assessed. My hunch is that this would actually SAVE money by moving care "upstream" and keeping more patients out of emergency departments and hospitals.

North Carolina currently ranks 39th in the country for access to mental health treatment. According to an article by FRONTLINE PBS: “On average, North Carolinians who go to an emergency room in crisis, wait 16 days for a state psychiatric hospital bed.” This mental health crisis has been festering since the early 1960s, when President JFK began the “deinstitutionalization” process. “Then in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that those living with mental illness are entitled to live outside hospitals when they can. By then, many states had been moving long-term patients into the community, said Duke University’s Dr. Marvin S. Swartz.” “It wasn’t that North Carolina was unique,” Swartz said, “it just was we got to the game later and overshot, overestimating our ability to create the community services we needed to create this ecosystem where people weren’t totally dependent on beds.” And access to beds has not gone up in proportion to an increased population in NC. In fact, it’s gone down. “There were 1,572 beds in 2000. Today, there are 894 — and only two-thirds of those are operating due to staff shortages, the state health department said.” The North Carolina legislature is finally making efforts to remediate these issues. “On March 23rd, the North Carolina legislature voted to expand Medicaid. The changes won’t go into effect, however, until the state enacts a budget. Legislative leaders hope that will happen before the end of June.” “When this law takes effect, it will make health care accessible to more than 600,000 North Carolinians,” Gov. Roy Cooper said, “many of them in the grips of mental illness or substance abuse who need health care, not handcuffs.” Read more and follow the story PBS North Carolina / FRONTLINE PBS here: https://lnkd.in/ez4HYj-B

I'm happy to share my latest publication from my PhD study. Worldwide people with serious mental illnesses face challenges accessing healthcare. Despite the fact that they are at greater risk of developing physical diseases. These diseases shorten their lifespan by 10-20 years. This article highlights the recommendations of health professionals, as well as people with serious mental illness and their caregivers (whose voices are often neglected in this type of health research) about ways the public health system in Jamaica can improve healthcare access for people with co-morbid serious mental illness and chronic physical illnesses.  Here is the link to article so you can read it. I promise it will raise your awareness 😀. https://lnkd.in/gVRtg4Rp #mentalhealthmatters #publichealth #NCDs #improvinghealthcare