...About 80% of the clients at Metro Community Provider Network have some behavioral or psychosocial component of their care.
Metro Community didn't find zeroing in on their highest utilizers moved the needle on controlling costs. Instead, they focused on those who consume around 8% to 12% of all services -- patients who were on the brink of disaster but not there yet.
"What we found is if we went one rung lower and kind of met with more patients -- not just the top 10 but the top 150 -- that we were able to have a better impact," Heather Logan, director of accountable care for Metro Community, told MedPage Today.
Their rationale? The lack of integrated mental health care.
One client of theirs visited the emergency department 56 times last year. He would visit the ED just because he felt lonely and wanted the attention of the workers there, Logan said. He suffered from multiple mental health issues, and no matter what medical care he received, nothing could change his ED use.
Kathryn Jantz, program lead for Colorado's ACCs, said integrating mental health is one of the "big things" they are looking at when it contracts for services with regional organizations in the summer of 2016.
Mental Health Care Hard to Find in Colo. Medicaid
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