Healthcare IT News reports on Allina’s successful deployment of tele-mental health strategies…

There is a division within Allina Health responsible for advancing the technology of telehealth in general, so Allina built off that model. In addition to deploying virtual behavioral health carts at regional sites and training staff to properly operate and manage the logistics of the equipment, staff credentialed all of the Iris Telehealth virtual providers to become Allina Health privileged providers.

“With that, the providers were onboarded as if we were to onboard a psychiatrist to work in-person and provide that care,” Clubb explained. “We then trained the providers in our electronic medical record and the documentation system because the goal was to have them not only see the patient remotely, but also to document within the record as if they were an Allina Health provider.

“It also meant credentialing with all the health plans we have contracts with, but it was really the identification of the need for the equipment and then the training of the staff to be able to use it to bring it to the patient,” he added.

RESULTS

There are a few key metrics Clubb is most proud of as it relates to improving patient care.

“First, across our regional hospitals, the partnership with Iris has helped decrease length of stay in our MedSurg and ICU floors by half a day,” he reported. “Having timely access to behavioral healthcare available has helped us ensure we progress patients’ care in a timely manner and ensure we have beds available for patients in need.

“Second, in our emergency department, we work diligently to provide brief treatment and intervention, including assessments, the initiation of medications and discharge considerations,” he continued. “In 2015, across our 12 emergency departments where we see approximately 22,000 patients pass through our doors, we were discharging about 55% to an outpatient plan.”

As a result of the work with Iris Telehealth and the team-based approach in the EDs, in 2022 Allina Health discharged nearly 63% of patients to an outpatient plan. Having behavioral health providers as a part of the team, whether it’s in-person or virtual, creates confidence in decision-making, and it’s helped drive that direction to an outpatient plan, Clubb said.

“Finally, as it relates to ED throughout, virtual care has helped us reduce the time our behavioral health patients spend in the ED,” he reported. “Before our partnership, the patients who had the longest length of stay in our emergency departments were our behavioral health patients. We launched a whole value stream approach, and with help from Iris, we’ve seen the length of stay decrease from 12 hours to nine hours. This 25% improvement has had a big impact on our ED throughput.”