Tag: mental health

Feeling your Pain part 2: Increasing and Improving your patient’s access to mental health services.

Feeling your Pain part 2: Increasing and Improving your patient’s access to mental health services.

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We all have images in our head of what an emergency room is like. Stressful and tense are two words that come to mind. People could be in the emergency room seeking treatment for almost anything. My previous two experiences in the emergency room range from a barely broken finger to a spider bite that was so bad the Doctors and Nurses had to sedate me because I couldn’t stop writhing in pain. It was in while I was in college that I barely broke my finger playing basketball and my memories of the emergency room include people who came in after me getting called back to be seen and taken care of earlier than I was. I guess that finger just wasn’t that big of a deal. The spider bite, however, had me being seen almost immediately and nurses and Doctors attending to me and my pain right away.

The staff in emergency rooms are used to dealing with challenging patients and tense situations but there are certain situations that can still make their job more challenging. When a patient enters an emergency room with a mental health issue and an assessment from a Psychiatrist is needed, it can add greatly to the stress level of the staff and affect the quality of care that the patient receives. If the emergency room is lucky enough to have access to a Psychiatrist, then they could be seen right away and that patient gets the help that he or she needs in a timely manner. The reality is that many emergency room locations do not have a Psychiatrist available because they may be located in a rural area where there is a provider shortage or it just might be that a Psychiatrist isn’t working that night. This is where Telehealth comes in.

A nurse or staff member, through a video-conference on a laptop or tablet or even a smartphone can talk to provider in a remote location and the patient can be assessed right away. The patient gets a professional assessment right away and is assigned the proper treatment options more quickly. Our clients have contracts with Psychiatrists in different locations who may be on call at a variety of locations in the same night. Our HIPAA Compliant video conferencing software is simple and does not require any heavy duty or expensive equipment, it can be run on your basic laptop or iPad. Using Telehealth has alleviated the pain of Emergency rooms not having to pay the expense of staffing a Psychiatrist around the clock and increased the quality of care for that patient because they can make the proper decisions much more quickly.

Lakeside Hospital in Memphis, TN is a case study in the effectiveness of using our Video Conferencing in the Mental Health and Emergency room areas. Please take a minute and read their testimonial below and give us a call to see how we can help your situation and alleviate your pain.

Increasing patient access – Lakeside Hospital in Memphis

“Secure Telehealth has changed the way we interact with patients in a positive way. Since implementing this product, we have dramatically decreased the time patients wait for their behavioral assessments and their treatment, expediting their transportation to the facility that best fits their treatment needs. Getting the patient the help they need is what we do, Secure Telehealth helps us get it done faster.”

-Wilson Foy

For more case studies, browse Our Customer Success Stories page!

Feeling your Pain Part 1

Feeling your Pain Part 1

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People from all over the United States come to us and they share many of the same problems.  They have some of the same frustrations and are fighting the same fights.  Perhaps some of these problems apply to you and and it is time to see if implementing a telehealth program can help those problems.  At Secure Telehealth we feel your pain because we have helped so many others through it and we can do the same for you.

Spending too much money paying people to drive around all day?

Example 1:  Last April, at the National Behavioral Health Convention, or NATCON, a woman came up to me who ran a rural mental and behavioral health clinic with multiple locations in Southwestern Virginia.   She started telling us about her organization and then she hit us with this statement, “I’m tired of paying my providers to drive around.” She was experiencing the pain of watching the wasted money go away every month as the  reimbursements for gas and travel and the hourly wages kept piling up.  We understood completely because other groups that we work with have shared the same problem and we have been able to help them with solutions.

In most states, the patient still has to be in an appropriate facility to be seen and for billing to get reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid, so they still get to their local clinic.  The pain reliever is that the provider can now stay in one office and help the patients at the satellite locations without being there in person.  Providers see more patients in a day, Patients get seen faster, the clinic improves the no-show rate and no more time and money is wasted while providers drive around.  For more information, contact Secure Telehealth today!