Salt Lake City, Utah —May 14, 2019— Collective Medical, delivering the nation’s most effective network for care collaboration, today announced enhanced platform functionality, including a groundbreaking consent feature, to support better collaboration between behavioral health providers, substance use disorder clinics, hospitals, physician practices, health plans and post-acute providers.
Forty-four million U.S. adults struggle with mental illness each year. Because of difficulties in accessing care, social determinants and other issues, these patients often end up turning to the emergency department (ED) for help and often without the knowledge of their behavioral health providers. According to an analysis of Collective Medical data, of patients with more than 100 ED visits within the past 12 months, 93 percent had behavioral health diagnoses and 10 percent were suspected homeless. These complex populations need personalized care that requires collaboration beyond the ED.
The Collective Platform features a first-to-market consent feature—complying with CFR 42 Part 2 requirements for respecting patient privacy—to facilitate care collaboration between behavioral health practices and substance use disorder clinics and the broader care team. This is groundbreaking for care teams supporting patients with mental, behavioral, and substance use disorders which were previously limited in their ability to collaborate.
Northwest Physicians Network (NPN) has been using the Collective Platform to collaborate with Pierce County Fire Districts and other community providers to support complex behavioral health patients in the region. Together, NPN and Pierce County Fire Districts have seen a 44 percent drop in 911 calls, a 47 percent reduction in EMS transport, a 36 percent reduction in ED visits, a 42 percent reduction in hospital admissions, and a 31 percent decrease in observation stays for these patients. Additionally, their combined efforts earned NPN and Pierce County the “Spotlight on Innovation” award at the 2019 Northwest Patient Safety Conference.
“Many patients have a long history of mental illness and substance use disorder. It takes multiple providers and multiple care settings coming together to understand and coordinate what these individuals need,” says Melissa Haney, communication partnership and behavioral integration manager at Northwest Physicians Network. “The Collective Platform has shown us that a lot of this high utilization is preventable and we’re able to better treat these complex patients.”
Using the Collective Platform’s real-time, risk-adjusted event notification and care collaboration tools, emergent, inpatient, post-acute, mental, behavioral, and ambulatory providers—as well as stakeholders in ACOs and health plans—can coordinate care together and achieve better overall patient outcomes.
“Vulnerable patient populations have needs that can’t be met at any single point of care,” says Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical. “Through improved collaboration with behavioral health providers, we’re observing life-changing outcomes at the individual level as well as statistically significant improvements at the population level. We’re excited to release this enhanced functionality so providers around the country can collaborate to put patients on the path to better health.”
Learn more about Collective’s impact at collectivemedical.com/behavioral-health
ABOUT COLLECTIVE MEDICAL
Collective Medical empowers care teams to improve patient outcomes by closing the communication gaps that undermine patient care. With a nationwide network engaged with every national health plan in the country, hundreds of hospitals and health systems and tens of thousands of providers, Collective’s system-agnostic platform is trusted by care teams to identify at-risk and complex patients and facilitate actionable collaboration to make better care decisions and improve outcomes. Based in Salt Lake City, Collective is proven to streamline transitions of care, improve coordination across diverse care teams, and reduce medically unnecessary hospital admissions. Learn more at www.collectivemedical.com and Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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Media Contacts
For Collective Medical
Erin Van Zomeren
Media Relations
(385) 275-6606
erin.vanzomeren@collectivemedical.com