Ginger.io www.ginger.io as the producer of a digital mental health solution has just launched Utah SmartCare http://auch.org/programs-services/utah-smartcare, a next generation care management project. The project is designed to improve patient engagement and health outcomes in low income Utah populations by integrating mental and physical health delivery to improve the quality and healthcare costs for this underserved population.
“In the past, integrating primary care with behavioral health delivery has proven an effective yet elusive method for treating patients with mental health conditions”, according to De. Anmol Madan, Co-Founder and CEO of Ginger.io.
“Up until this point, we haven’t had the technology to effectively measure how patients are feeling outside of a care setting. Now that this remote data is more readily available, we are integrating the data with the existing healthcare system and delivering the sort or personalized outreach to improve care for patients and at the same time drive down costs.”
Utah SmartCare is funded by the Cambia Health Foundation http://cambiahealthfoundation.org and the Association for Utah Community Health (AUCH) www.AUCH.org. The project focuses on improving care for high cost patients suffering from serious mental illness, generalized anxiety, and generalized depression, along with serious physical health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease.
A smartphone app gathers patient information where deep analytics is performed. Trained clinic staff then check patients’ and their patterns of behavior and mental state that might impact their health and well-being. If the staff notices that something is wrong, the doctor is notified and may follow-up with a phone call to the patient.
Utah SmartCare is partnering with three local mental health authorities, two community health clinics and their patients. All five sites are using the Ginger.io technology platform to integrate primary care with mental health services, but how they achieve that goal varies from site to site.
One site, Wasatch Mental Health is using the technology in a crisis center capacity to better manage patients in the acute phase of their behavioral health condition. Another site, Health Connections at Weber Human Services is integrating the Ginger.io technology into existing workflows to support and improve the outreach of current case managers on staff.
“We’ve already received great feedback from clients enrolled in the program,” said Brandon Hatch, Executive Director of Davis Behavioral Health, one of the local mental health authorities participating in the Utah SmartCare initiative. “This data allows us to better assess how our clients are doing between appointments and catch any potential problems earlier.”