POLICY
Developments From Healthcare, Education & Community Circles
Foster Care Youth Facing Mental Health Crisis
Challenges in the foster care system include inability of the health system to coordinate care and treatment for mental illness. There are programs emerging to address the gaps.
Eating Disorder Hospitalizations Double
Eating disorders continue to be a challenge - now filling up hospitals as the disorders exacerbated during the isolating pandemic. But solutions are forming.
Rideshare Companies Improving Access But Training Drivers Important To Consider
Rideshare-based non-emergent medical transportation companies like Lyft and Uber are a solution for patients without reliable transportation. Both providers offer rides across the continuum of care.
Insurers Prioritizing Behavioral Health
The 17th edition of the Healthcare Payer Index tracks managed care priorities and why they changed over time. While just 3 of the top 20 emerging priorities for health insurers fall squarely under the behavioral health umbrella, 17 of the 20 have some connection to behavioral health.
Clinicians On Scene With Police For Mental Health Disputes
Police officers in several cities now have therapists along for the ride. See why and if it’s working.
Psych Residency Interest Rising, But Challenges Remain
A new wave of psych professionals is coming, which should alleviate some shortage issues and amplify the importance of integrating behavioral health evaluation into primary care.
5 New Behavioral Health Centers Created
Florida Blue’s behavioral health benefit manager, New Directions, acquired digital behavioral health company, Tridiuum, which has automated behavioral health screening, triaging, and matching capabilities.
When Tech Helps Ease Mental Health Delivery
Two companies have combined to improve the delivery of mental health services.
Therapy Going Out To Pasture
People are taking to grass pastures to find healing through interactions with, of all things, so-called therapy cows.
Employers, Schools Changing “Mental Health” Policy
Employers are making a change regarding workplace mental health.
Companies Scaling Back Mental Health Benefits Despite Employee Prioritization
The pandemic has highlighted the need for employer-provided mental health benefits, and in 2021 employees are using these benefits more than ever before.
Rocky Mountain High On Fixing Youth Mental Health Gap
Colorado legislators, caregivers, patients, and community members will assemble the Behavioral Health Transformational Task Force in August to allocate the $450 million dollars dedicated to behavioral health from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Major Cities Creating Police-Free Response Teams
NYC’s Police-Free Mental Health Response Team Is Helping People Get Treatment. The NYC pilot program, known as B-Heard, responds to nonviolent mental health calls with paramedics and mental health professionals instead of police.
CVS Health To Add Therapists To Stores
CVS Health is adding mental health counseling to the services offered at about a dozen of its stores with HealthHUBS in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas as a part of a pilot program that launched in January, with plans to expand to 34.
Social Service Models Helping Address Health Disparities
In one of the largest studies about the impact of social determinants of health initiatives, 544 insurers, hospitals, physician groups and community organizations weighed in on the status of their programs, unmet needs, challenges and recent successes.
6 Stories of Resilience, Recovery
In this fireside chat style 2-hour Q&A we tried to go behind the scenes with 5 companies interviewing 7 healthcare innovators around their novel approach to addiction and depression recovery and to changing the path for those with poor housing, food insecurity, PTSD and fall risk from isolation.
Home Meal Lifts Mood, Limits Risk For Mental Health
Project Angel Food in California provides over 2,000 meals a week during the pandemic to the frail elderly and people with serious illnesses, such as heart disease, or those coming out of surgery like a bypass, up from 1,600 meals a week in 2019. God’s Love We Deliver, a New York non-profit, also reports a record number of home deliveries since March.
Podcast Debates Urgent Care for Mental Health
Centers dedicated to being efficient in a potential suicide and handling high-risk mental health situations are popping up in a number of US cities. They are funded typically from a combination of corporate, hospital, university and sometimes government funds, and they are designed to give police a better place to bring people who are in a crisis and free up crowded hospital ERs.
Triaging Mental Health Crisis Becoming Team Effort
There continue to be a host of ways to head off suicide or talk to a mental health counselor. 988 is now the new number to call to head off a suicide and thank goodness - it's a heck of a lot easier to remember than the previous 800 number that few used! Hotlines continue to try to hire staff.
Fall of Education
Financial stress has a way of forcing us to change behavior and, well, this is a doozy: 61% of college students will forgo school this year according to our random poll of 417 incoming freshman and sophomores and more than a third of those “taking a break” report plans to try and ‘start up digital businesses’, namely apps, many partnering with fellow classmates and old friends.