Rural veterans who received tablets from the Department of Veterans Affairs made telehealth psychotherapy appointments and had fewer suicide-related emergency room visits, according to a new study Learn Posted Wednesday.

Study authors from VA Health Economics Resource Center The VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California, tracked more than 13,000 veterans with a history of mental health in the first year of the pandemic after receiving broadband and video-enabled tablets from the VA.Tablet enabled Veteran Research shows they get more mental health care than usual and are less likely to visit the emergency room for any reason.

The researchers concluded that other health systems could implement similar programs for their rural patients to increase access to mental health care and prevent suicide.

Kimberly Smathers, managing director of ATI Consulting, said: “The findings do appear to hold promise for reducing the disparity in suicide in rural areas, which is increasing as we see higher rates of suicide in rural areas. expand.”

She added that using a tablet on a hoe could help older adults living in rural areas remove stigma around suicide and mental health.

have higher interest rates According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide rates among residents in rural areas are higher than those in urban areas, and the gap has only increased since 1999.US Veteran‘ ratio suicide Almost twice as many as those without military service.Rural veterans have higher suicide rates than Veteran Live in the city.

In 2016, the Virginia Office of Rural Health and the Office of Connected Care began distributing tablets to veterans. As of September 2021, more than 100,000 veterans owned tablets, 93% of which were distributed during the pandemic. One-third of veterans who received electronic devices lived in rural areas, and the researchers used data from the health system to track the outcomes of those rural residents who had previously received a mental health visit.

Tablets were associated with an overall 20% lower likelihood of an ED visit and a 36% lower likelihood of an ED visit. Suicide related ED visits, an increase of 3.5 video psychotherapy visits per year.

Although the findings provide a potential template for non-VA health systems and payers, VA systems have very different integration structures. For example, most U.S. insurance companies operate business units in silos, with mental health and health care operating separately.

“them [insurers] Dr. Joe Parks, medical director of the National Council of Mental Health, said the findings should of course be of interest, but one difficulty companies often encounter is separate budgeting and management systems for inpatient and outpatient patients. “There are many interventions that show that treating mental illness can reduce hospitalizations, but it’s not sustainable if those costs go to behavioral health and all the savings go to medical care.”

Parks said many insurers have tried pilots similar to the VA program, but they face problems with grant funding and expansion plans.

“Grant-funded pilots generally show good results, but often do not lead to permanent changes to the care system,” Parks said. “Once the grant money runs out, they die because all payers don’t have enough to sustain it.”

Scan Health Plan, a nonprofit insurance company with 275,000 members, mostly Medicare Advantage members, launched a program shortly before the pandemic began targeting mental health services. The program works with a group of doctors in an area of ??California that lacks mental health clinicians. Program members, as well as any older patients in the practice, can visit psychiatrists via video set up in the primary care office, all funded by Scan. Once the pandemic hit, in-office telehealth visits moved to patients’ homes.

The program stopped funding the program after 18 months, but because of low depression and anxiety measure scores and other outcomes, the physician group decided to continue the program and expand it to all patients. Scan Health chief medical officer Dr Romilla Batra said they stopped funding because it had a value-based care compensation arrangement in which teams of doctors were already paid to provide mental health care.

“We know doctors may not be ready to try and test new things, but we know it’s necessary to do so [mental health service innovation]”We’ve been thinking about how we can provide care to our members, and we’re also working with primary care physicians, so it’s a [care delivery] Not out of touch. “

Scan is currently evaluating the project in partnership with UCLA and will soon publish findings on improvements in depression scores and the impact on hospitalizations or suicide-related emergency department visits.

Community behavioral health centers receive higher Medicare reimbursement by establishing formal relationships with area hospitals and primary care physicians to coordinate patients’ health care, Parks said.Many centers transition to telemedicine because of the epidemic.

When the Department of Health and Human Services expanded telehealth payments under the 2020 COVID-19 public health emergency, non-VA providers got a boost in expanding telehealth. The Biden administration is expected to extend the current deadline beyond April 16, but there is a question of how long it will last as COVID-19 cases subside. While Congress recently extended the emergency due date for telehealth payments by five months, it must pass legislation to keep those changes permanent.

Private payers have the flexibility to make these payments permanent, but many also follow Medicare’s Medicare policy, said Micron, executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy, a federally designated national telehealth policy research group.

“Providers should have the option to use it [telehealth] If they think it’s right for a particular patient at a particular time,” Kwong said.