KEY POINT: The client assessment data you already have in your electronic health record can help you justify more resources during these times.
Mental health care providers are conveying stories about an intensifying need to address anxiety and well-being concerns for people served as the COVID-19 pandemic takes over our former way of living. There are many different reasons related to decrease in well-being during this time, including: fear of illness, concern for loved ones, loss of income and financial concerns, loss of routine, isolation and loneliness, loss of well-being support resources (group therapy, wellness centers, yoga classes, etc.), enmeshment in a dysfunctional family setting, and uncertainty of the future, to name a few. In addition, there are challenges as care modalities move to remote, online and telehealth options. Are these options providing enough support for people served? Are folks able to find ‘safe’ places at home to talk openly with a care worker? How does this new approach compare to usual care? To answer this question, you must first ask: How good was usual care?
Mental health outcomes have always been difficult to measure. Traditionally, mental health outcomes have been measured dichotomously as: did a person complete care or leave care early? The only other quantifiable metrics were measuring how often a person received services and for what duration. Occasionally there were ‘client satisfaction surveys’ after treatment. That was it. Can you tell from this if folks benefitted from the care they received? What is the definition of completing care and who makes the decision that care was complete?
But what if you, as a care provider, are seeing the same (or less!) utilization, but you know, you just know, that people need more support than usual? You know that the woman living with the controlling partner can’t get away – not even to work. You believe that the child with the eating disorder is losing more weight. You wonder if the teenager who was cutting is hiding those marks from the video camera. What means do you have to prove to administrators that more resources are needed to address what you know are worsening conditions? When asked ‘how do you know’ that the standard of weekly sessions is not enough, you can tell stories of what you suspect, but what evidence do you have to validate your concerns?
Many systems likely have at least part of the answer at hand already. Remember those, often burdensome, client assessments that sometimes felt like such a chore? They can now act as the foundation on which you can base your justification for more resources. The right assessments can help you quantify increasing anxiety, depression and irritability in a person or a population. They can help you identify increasing family dysfunction, isolation, suicide ideation, compulsions and sleep disturbances. The right strength-based assessment can also help you and the folks you serve focus on celebrating new skills which help build resilience in a time of uncertainty. Folks who focus some time to find or build hobbies, new skills for the workforce, spiritual interests, intellectual pursuits or philanthropic activities might feel more optimistic and perhaps a little less anxious. We can utilize the assessment data we already have in our health record system in more meaningful ways in order to help those most in need.
COVID-19 has provided an opportunity to focus on mental health and overall well-being. The growing demand for mental health resources provides an opportunity to focus on mental health outcomes in a new way as well. As a provider, you can implement simpler, more focused assessments to measure progress on addressing needs and building skills. You can then justify a need for more resources when you see a person or a population is struggling. Then administrators can direct resources to the right place at the right time where people need them most. There are many people you serve who you know are struggling. Do you need help to justify more resources? Opeeka can help you make that case. Opeeka can help you capture assessment information that is meaningful to your system of care, track it over time and learn what works for whom so that you can concentrate resources where they will make the most impact for your people. Opeeka’s Person-Centered Intelligence Solution (P-CIS) is changing mental health outcomes – for the better.
