primary care

Healthcare Costs and Health Issues | Streamline Healthcare

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One Key to Controlling Healthcare Costs: Improve Behavioral Health The relationship between behavioral health and overall healthcare spending A detailed study by Milliman, one of the leading actuarial firms in the world, demonstrates a strong relationship between individuals’ behavioral health issues and their overall health care costs, and at the same time notes that spending … Read more

The Importance of Value-Based Care in Behavioral Health

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As the healthcare field evolves into a more efficient system, key changes allow for advances that are revolutionizing the industry. An innovative new value-based care model has expanded the focus to reducing costs, decreasing medical errors, and achieving better overall health for clients. Providers are increasingly turning to this value-based healthcare model in order to achieve value-based results. 

Under this model, providers are rewarded for helping individuals reduce the negative impact chronic disease can have on a client’s life and the number of occurrences of chronic diseases. Rather than being paid by each service they prescribe or perform, they are rewarded based on the health of the client.

A value-based model can: 

  • Lower costs for clients
  • Increase client satisfaction
  • Offer reduced health risks
  • Align prices with outcomes 
  • Lead to better overall health 

This model is spreading through the primary care industry and while it’s had a positive impact, the behavioral health industry has been slower to adopt it.

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Improve Care Coordination with Healthcare Integration

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Improve Care Coordination with Healthcare Integration

When people are seeking medical care, no matter what their symptoms, they tend to start in the same place, their primary care physician. But often, due to the nature of their illness, or shame about talking about mental illness, they do not receive all the treatment they need from their primary care provider. According to the American Psychiatric Association, many clients need behavioral care specialists. “As many as 40% of all patients seen in primary care settings have a mental illness…” In many situations, mental illness is not the primary reason for the visit. If not addressed or realized by their primary care physician, symptoms can progress and get worse requiring additional services and more intensive levels of care.

While the primary care physician first sees an individual, learns their history, and gathers important information on his or her medical background, at times the clinician is not able to provide comprehensive treatment, due to a lack of resources, time, or simply because the treatment the client needs is not their specialty. Their client is often referred to another practice for treatment, which means it is critical that all health information is shared between providers, as missing data could result in a lapse in care. For clients who need both primary and behavioral healthcare, coordinating these efforts under one umbrella can vastly improve overall client care.

There are a variety of ways to achieve this goal. In this blog, we share a few key aspects of providing clients with integrated health care.

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