28 A patient-centered approach to improving behavioral health care access

<h3>Description</h3> Increased capacity and access to mental health care via telehealth has largely been outstripped by the demand for services, resulting in long wait times. In this session, participants will analyze an approach that improves access to behavioral health services though brief assessments and interventions. After initial pilot testing with promising results, HealthPartners has scaled this model to serve 38 primary and specialty care locations. For the 5000+ patients served under this model of care, 40% were seen by a behavioral health clinician the same or next day, the average time a patient waited to see a clinician (from the time of scheduling) was 4 days, patients completed an average of 1.5 visits and only 14% were referred on to traditional therapy within the system to meet their needs. Behavioral health clinicians under this model are able to serve 280% more patients per year compared to traditional models. A new model of care that incorporates brief interventions and non-traditional appointments enables rapid access to behavioral health care, addresses patient needs in the moment, before symptom exacerbation, and reduces the downstream demand on traditional behavioral health services.