McKees Rocks, PA – Sto-Rox Family Health Center is launching a new telepsychiatry program in March 2019. InSight Telepsychiatry will bring 16 hours a week of scheduled adult psychiatry services.
Telepsychiatry is the delivery of psychiatry through real-time videoconferencing. It is proven to be an effective form of care delivery and a convenient, cost-effective way to safely expand psychiatric support without the challenge of staffing an in-person psychiatry provider.
The telepsychiatry program is launched in partnership with InSight, a national telepsychiatry service provider organization. The program is also partly funded by the AIMS Grant which provides technical assistance funding. The services provided to Sto-Rox Family Health Center will include the same services someone would receive in-person, with the goal of treating the behavioral health needs of adolescents and adults so that they can achieve their potential through a balanced and healthy lifestyle.
Sto-Rox Telepsychiatry Room
“Our team at Sto-Rox is excited to provide telepsychiatry to additionally help our neighborhood and the patients we are honored to serve, while simultaneously taking a step forward to embrace the future of healthcare delivery,” says Dr. John Barczynski, CEO of Sto-Rox Family Health Center. “As we adjust to changing times, we remain committed to our unchanging mission.”
Increased access to mental health services is growing need as 57.7 million – one-in-four – people live with mental illness of some sort across the country. The new telepsychiatry program will bring additional access to mental health services to the McKees Rocks community and surrounding areas.
About Sto-Rox Family Health Center
Sto-Rox Family Health Center‘s staff includes a psychiatrist and licensed clinical social worker. Our services include Diagnosis and Follow-Up, Anxiety, Depression, Grief Support, Healthy Lifestyle Choices, such as those needed to manage chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, and Stress Management. More information can be found at http://www.storoxfqhc.org/behavioral-health/
MARLTON, NJ – InSight Telepsychiatry has named telepsychiatry-industry leader Shawn Ball to its Chief Operating Officer position. Ball has served as the interim chief operating officer at InSight since August 2018.
Ball has extensive experience within the telepsychiatry industry, strategic planning, financial planning and analysis, change management and account management. He has a background in business consulting and has held leadership positions with organizations such as Dell, Motorola and JSA Health Telepsychiatry. He has a strong ability to lead strategic business development initiatives from conception to implementation and understands the technical aspects of business to develop models to drive key performance metrics.
At InSight, Ball oversees the talent, human resources, external operations and internal operations teams. He is responsible for aligning these departments to realize InSight’s mission of delivering quality behavioral health care through innovative applications of technology. Under Ball’s leadership, InSight will meet its goals of providing best of class, solution-oriented services to its partners, providers and consumers.
About InSight + Regroup
InSight + Regroup (now Array Behavioral Care) is the leading and largest telepsychiatry service provider in the US with a mission to transform access to quality behavioral health care. InSight + Regroup serves hundreds of organizations and individuals in various settings across the continuum of care with its on-demand, scheduled services and direct-to-consumer (Inpathy) divisions. Given its size, diversity of services and extensive experience and expertise, InSight + Regroup is uniquely positioned to enable scalable telepsychiatry programs across the care continuum. As an industry thought leader, InSight + Regroup has helped shape the field, define the standard of care and advocate for improved telepsychiatry-friendly regulations. To learn more, visit www.arraybc.com.
“I’m honored to be on the InSight leadership team and look forward to InSight’s continued growth,” says Ball. “By aligning InSight’s operations in a way that meets the needs of our partners we are able to use telepsychiatry to transform access to behavioral health care at all stages of the care continuum.”
Marlton, NJ, March 27, 2019: In response to The New York Office of Mental Health’s proposed regulations to define standards for appropriate telemental health in its New York codes and regulations, InSight Telepsychiatry has written to suggest changes to the language in order to improve access to behavioral healthcare.
As they are currently written, the proposed regulations would put New York behind other states in terms of telemental health and would unnecessarily restrict a solution intended to increase access to timely, quality care to New York residents. They would also significantly limit the impact of the telehealth parity law enacted by Governor Cuomo in 2014.
Additionally, the proposed regulations do not appear to properly reflect how telemental health services are being used by a large number of telemental health providers throughout the nation. They also do not take into account trends in telemental health that extend care to new and more convenient locations for both the provider and the patient.
InSight Telepsychiatry Writes to Modify the New York Office of Mental Health’s Proposed Regulations Regarding Telemental Health
InSight applauds New York’s desire to increase access to care through telehealth and appreciates that the Office of Mental Health gave the opportunity for interested parties to review and comment on the proposed regulations
To modify regulations to the advantage of all parties, InSight has suggested several simple changes to the regulations. Read InSight’s letter to New York’s Office of Mental Health and learn more about the proposed changes here.
About InSight + Regroup
InSight + Regroup (now Array Behavioral Care) is the leading and largest telepsychiatry service provider in the US with a mission to transform access to quality behavioral health care. InSight + Regroup serves hundreds of organizations and individuals in various settings across the continuum of care with its on-demand, scheduled services and direct-to-consumer (Inpathy) divisions. Given its size, diversity of services and extensive experience and expertise, InSight + Regroup is uniquely positioned to enable scalable telepsychiatry programs across the care continuum. As an industry thought leader, InSight + Regroup has helped shape the field, define the standard of care and advocate for improved telepsychiatry-friendly regulations. To learn more, visit www.arraybc.com.
NASHVILLE, TN – Geoffrey Boyce, Chief Executive Officer of InSight Telepsychiatry, is returning to this year’s National Council for Behavioral Health NatCon Conference as a panel presentation speaker.
Boyce will be speaking on a panel titled, “Are We at a Telehealth Tipping Point?” which will take place on Monday, March 25, 2019 at the Opryland Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville.
The panel will discuss “the tailwinds in telehealth today and the existing hurdles to true scaled penetration of telehealth.” Learning objectives include:
Boyce spoke at the NatCon 2018 Conference in Washington, DC, on a panel titled, “Creating a Telebehavioral Health Strategy.” He will be joined on this year’s panel by Jonathan Evans, MA, President and CEO of InnovaTel Telepsychiatry, as well as Samir Malik, MBA, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Telepsychiatry of Genoa Healthcare.
The panel will take place from 4:15 – 5:15 pm in the Ryman Ballroom C, Level 0. InSight will also be exhibiting at the conference at booth 309 in the Solutions Pavilion Exhibit Hall.
About InSight + Regroup
InSight + Regroup (now Array Behavioral Care) is the leading and largest telepsychiatry service provider in the US with a mission to transform access to quality behavioral health care. InSight + Regroup serves hundreds of organizations and individuals in various settings across the continuum of care with its on-demand, scheduled services and direct-to-consumer (Inpathy) divisions. Given its size, diversity of services and extensive experience and expertise, InSight + Regroup is uniquely positioned to enable scalable telepsychiatry programs across the care continuum. As an industry thought leader, InSight + Regroup has helped shape the field, define the standard of care and advocate for improved telepsychiatry-friendly regulations. To learn more, visit www.arraybc.com.
Pete Wilkins has recognized OCA Ventures, one of Regroup's investors, as "One of 12 Chicago VCs You Should Know About" in Forbes. Bravo OCA!
Also recognized:
Originally published on AP News
Walmart workers can now see a doctor for only $4. The catch? It has to be a virtual visit.
The retail giant recently rolled back the $40 price on telemedicine, becoming the latest big company to nudge employees toward a high-tech way to get diagnosed and treated remotely.
But patients have been slow to embrace virtual care. Eighty percent of mid-size and large U.S. companies offered telemedicine services to their workers last year, up from 18 percent in 2014, according to the consultant Mercer. Only 8 percent of eligible employees used telemedicine at least once in 2017, most recent figures show.
“There’s an awful lot of effort right now focused on educating the consumer that there’s a better way,” said Jason Gorevic, CEO of telemedicine provider Teladoc Health.
Widespread smartphone use, looser regulations and employer enthusiasm are helping to expand access to telemedicine, where patients interact with doctors and nurses from afar, often through a secure video connection. Supporters say virtual visits make it easier for patients to see a therapist or quickly find help for ailments that aren’t emergencies. But many still fall back to going to the doctor’s office when they’re sick.
Health care experts have long said that changing behavior can be hard. In telemedicine’s case, patients might learn about it from their employer and then forget about it by the time they need care a few months later. Plus emotions can complicate health care decisions, said Mercer’s Beth Umland.
“My little kid is sick, I want them to have the best of care right away, and for some people that might not register as a telemedicine call,” she said.
Some patients, especially older ones, also just prefer an in-person visit.
“Going to the doctor’s office is a big event in their life and something they look forward to,” said Geoffrey Boyce, CEO of InSight Telepsychiatry, which provides virtual mental health services.
Tom Hill's support for telemedicine
Tom Hill is among that crowd. The 66-year-old from Mooresville, Indiana, said he’s never used telemedicine and has no plans to.
“I believe in a handshake and looking a guy in the eye,” said Hill during a recent shopping break at a downtown Indianapolis mall. “I don’t buy anything online either.”
But the practice does gain fans once patients try it.
Julie Guerrero-Goetsch has opened her MDLive telemedicine app several times since first using it about a year ago to get help for a sinus infection.
The Fallon, Nevada, resident was skeptical, but she didn’t have time to go in person. MDLive connected her to a doctor soon after she opened the app. She said he started asking questions about symptoms “just as if I was sitting in a doctor’s office” and prescribed an antibiotic.
Caitlin Powers tried telemedicine recently after hearing about it through a friend. The Columbia University graduate student was feeling stuffed up and worried she might be coming down with the flu. She said her appointment started on time, lasted 10 minutes, and she spoke by video with a doctor in Florida while never leaving her Brooklyn apartment.
“As a student, I don’t really have time to spend three hours waiting to see a doctor, and this was so easy,” she said.
Doctors have used telemedicine for years to monitor patients or reach those in remote locations. Now more employers are encouraging people covered under their health plans to seek care virtually for several reasons.
Telemedicine can reduce time spent away from the job, and it also can cost half the price of a doctor’s visit, which might top $100 for someone with a high-deductible plan. However, those savings can be negated if telemedicine’s convenience causes people to overuse it.
Walmart said it cut the cost for virtual visits to give another care option to the more than one million people covered by its health benefits.
Everybody needs telehealth
Employers aren’t the only ones pushing the technology.
The drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens are promoting apps that let customers connect to doctors. Some insurers like Oscar Health are offering it for free to customers as a first line of treatment.
Ease of use is one of the reasons researchers and telemedicine providers think the practice will become more widespread in several areas of care. Those include dermatology and follow-up doctor visits after a surgery or medical procedure.
Mental health visits are another area ripe for virtual care because patients can feel more comfortable talking to a therapist in their own home, said Boyce of InSight Telepsychiatry, which delivers mental health care in about 30 states.
Boyce said people also like the anonymity of a virtual visit.
Mental health visits were the most common use of telemedicine by patients until primary care overtook that specialty a few years ago, Harvard’s Dr. Ateev Mehrotra and other researchers found in a recent study of claims data from a large insurer.
Research firm IHS Markit estimates that telemedicine visits in the U.S. will soar from 23 million in 2017 to 105 million by 2022. But even then, they will probably amount to only about one out of every 10 doctor visits, said senior analyst Roeen Roashan.
MDLive CEO Rich Berner said telemedicine is like the digital video recorder TiVo, which took a while to catch on with viewers.
“People were so used to doing things the other way that it just took a little while to kind of really go mainstream,” he said. “But when it did, it went mainstream big-time.”
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
By Holli Stayton, psychiatric nurse practitioner for AtHome, the direct-to-consumer division of Array Behavioral Care
A 13-year-old girl diagnosed with depression is responding well to anti-depressant medication prescribed three months ago. She’s involved in numerous extra-curricular after-school activities, and her parents both work full time. A busy family schedule makes it challenging to book regular check-in appointments with her doctor during traditional office hours.
Concerned that inconsistent appointments will negatively impact their daughter’s progress, her parents opt to try direct-to-consumer (D2C) telepsychiatry—online therapy delivered through videoconferencing technology. The girl can now meet with a licensed child and adolescent provider on her family computer directly from the comfort of her own home following school and her extra-curricular activities—all before her nightly family dinner.
Meet the new face of behavioral health care that is fast becoming a viable—and often preferred—option for today’s children and teens. Conducted remotely through any computer, tablet or smartphone, D2C models offer an alternative for more convenient care amid current behavioral health challenges.
The demand for child and adolescent behavioral health care is soaring, and specialty provider shortages have reached severe levels throughout the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A simple math equation paints a grim and telling picture: In California, there are only 1,135 child and adolescent behavioral health providers to serve more than nine million children and teens—7 percent of who struggle with a behavioral health disorder severe enough to impact daily life.
Couple those stats with busy family schedules, and the access to care challenge for the nation’s children appears bleak. The good news is that telepsychiatry is proving to be an effective choice embraced by today’s youth and in some cases, a better option.
Telepsychiatry Importance
Here are five reasons why families are increasingly turning to telepsychiatry.
A new door is opening for child and adolescent behavioral health care, and the benefits are unlimited. With options like telepsychiatry becoming more widely available, families are no longer bound by the limitations of traditional health care and can take greater control of their children’s behavioral health needs—without the hassle. For today’s parents, telepsychiatry offers a positive step towards more consumer-friendly options to improve children and adolescent health.
Marlton, NJ, January 9, 2019: InSight Telepsychiatry has written to support recommendations for the special registration process for telemedicine under Ryan Haight. The recommendations were recently created and shared by the American Telemedicine Association with several key members at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). With the creation of a special registration for telemedicine, more providers would have the opportunity to help address the opioid crisis and other public health concerns. The recommendations in summary are:
1. Update the current DEA registration process to specify distinctions between traditional and telemedicine prescribing privileges
2. Allow both sites and prescribers to register for telemedicine
3. Allow for a public comment period within the one-year timeline for special registration activation
4. Ensure that telemedicine special registration is not restricted to any single discipline
5. Allow telemedicine prescribers to apply for DEA registration numbers in multiple states at once
Leveraging Telemedicine to improve access to Health Care
Due to restrictions set forth by the Ryan Haight Act, hundreds of providers who are passionate about leveraging telemedicine to improve access to care have been limited in their ability to provide their full range of services. This includes appropriately prescribing controlled substances like buprenorphine through Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Programs that leverage telemedicine to combat the opioid crisis. It also includes the services of child and adolescent psychiatry providers who practice via telehealth and often serve children who would benefit from the appropriate prescribing of stimulants—
a controlled substance that is restricted by the Ryan Haight Act and that is also considered to be the best practice for treating ADHD. InSight is the leading national telepsychiatry organization and employs hundreds of psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners who would be able to utilize the special registration to provide much-needed care to more people.
With the passage of the Substance Use–Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act of 2018, the DEA has the explicit deadline of October 24, 2019 to create this long-promised special registration for telemedicine. DEA has the opportunity to make several measured changes that would catapult the reach of telemedicine providers like those at InSight to help resolve critical public health needs.
Read InSight’s letter of support and the full ATA recommendations here.
By Geoffrey Boyce, Originally published on American Journal of Managed Care
New Policies Expand the Reach of Telepsychiatry for Opioid Use Disorder
Telepsychiatry has the potential to help address one of the nation’s most significant crises: opioid use disorder. However, policy changes are needed first. In 2019, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is expected to establish special registration for telemedicine, as required by the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act of 2018.
The prescribing of controlled substances is necessary for a common treatment of opioid use disorder: medication assisted treatment (MAT). However, current federal regulation—the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008—limits the prescribing of controlled substances via telemedicine. By creating the long-awaited special registration for telemedicine in 2019, the DEA will help open doors for the appropriate prescribing of controlled substances via telemedicine, and thus allow for telepsychiatry to help address the opioid epidemic.
Additionally, another impactful way the special registration for telemedicine would improve access to needed care is with child and adolescent psychiatry—a discipline where certain controlled substances are the preferred treatment for common disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
New Policies Expand the Reach of Telepsychiatry for Medicare Populations
Another exciting policy development for telemental health is the Mental Health Telemedicine Expansion Act that was introduced this year, which, if enacted in 2019, would have a significant impact on America’s aging population. The bill would eliminate the originating site requirement for Medicare reimbursement for telemental health services. Currently, there are 8 originating site requirements for Medicare reimbursement, including provider offices, hospitals, critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers, skilled nursing facilities, community mental health centers, and hospital-based or critical access hospital-based renal dialysis centers. By eliminating this requirement, Medicare beneficiaries would be able to be reimbursed for telemental health services they receive in their home and other settings.
Growth of Telepsychiatry in Collaborative Care Models
In recent years, the use of team-based approaches like the IMPACT model have proven successful for a wide range of behavioral health conditions. Telepsychiatry helps advance the use of these models by removing the need for care teams to colocate. Providers can conveniently interact and seamlessly deliver care via televideo.
Payers are particularly invested in the expanded use of collaborative care models and are increasingly looking for creative ways to partner with telepsychiatry providers or practices leveraging telepsychiatry to achieve the greatest value in care. With the recent addition of collaborative care codes for reimbursement, providers will also be encouraged to incorporate more team-based treatments into care.
Originally published on WSJPro
By Laura Cooper
Patients have become accustomed to doctor-on-demand services—and private-equity firms have taken notice.
With companies such as Teladoc Inc., which provides access to doctors via videoconferencing and calls, becoming more commonplace, it is no surprise that the idea of on-demand behavioral health services is attracting investor attention, too.
Mental Health Care Insides
The move into on-demand behavioral health is a natural one for private-equity firms, which have embraced technology-enabled health-care offerings and poured money into many different facets of behavioral health.
“I think the space makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons,” said Michael Siano, a director at the investment bank Houlihan Lokey who focuses on the health-care information-technology space. “At a high level it’s one of the most under diagnosed and capacity constrained areas of health-care in my opinion. That’s why it’s really efficient and important to have on-demand mental health services.” Consumer-based, technology-enabled mental health care is drawing venture-capital interest, too. Last year, Talkspace—which operates a messaging platform that connects patients to therapists and counts Michael Phelps as its spokesman—received a $31 million Series C funding round from several venture investors. With both the behavioral health and technology sectors intriguing to investors, it is possible more private-equity firms will pursue deals in the on-demand behavioral health space over the course of the coming year.
