Home Health Providers Believe They Can Be The ‘Quarterback’ For Behavioral Health Needs

Home Health Care News | By Patrick Filbin
 
As in-home care providers look to use a more integrated approach to care, it’s critical to some that mental and behavioral health is part of the equation.
 
Despite the added costs that come with offering those services, the need to care for patients with those ailments is undeniable.
 
“Typically, these folks are 10 to 15 times more costly than a patient without behavioral health need experience,” Joe Cramer, president of hospice and behavioral health at Elara Caring, said during Aging Media Network’s Continuum event in December. “We’re looking at how to partner with primary care or psychiatric providers to do a total cost of care from either an episodic perspective, or a full total cost of care perspective, where we are essentially the quarterback of their care.”
 
Elara Caring is a Texas-based home health, hospice, personal care, palliative care and behavioral health provider. It has a 16-state footprint and does about 100,000 in-home visits for patients with serious mental illness or substance use disorder per year.
 
Prior to the pandemic, Elara Caring provided behavioral health services in two states. It now does so in nine states, and has been able to do so by training its psychiatric nurses on how to properly care for patients with specific needs.
 
Recently, Elara Caring developed a program called “Embrace,” which aims to help its members who have experienced loss. That loss could be of a loved one, their independence or their home, Cramer explained.
 
Patients can access the program at home, which could be a skilled nursing facility (SNF), senior living facility or a private residence.
 
“Roughly 50% of individuals going into senior living or a SNF have elevated anxiety or depression,” Cramer said. “Our nurses are really trained in supporting their behavioral health diagnosis.”
 
Senior care providers sometimes focus on the medical and think of behavioral treatment as secondary. However, Elara Caring’s approach is symbolic of a larger movement in senior care where the two kinds of care can be addressed under one umbrella.
 
“With Elara, we focus on the behavioral with the medical conditions there,” Cramer said. “We’re looking at what’s causing the anxiety or depression, if they have that, and what kind of loss they’re dealing with to really support them.”
 
Embrace, Cramer said, has reported a 78% reduction or stabilization of a patient’s anxiety or depression and 33% reduction in patients being admitted into facilities rather than the places they call home.
 
Payers and insurers are also involved heavily in this movement.

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