Consumerization of products continues to drive new innovations across the marketplace. For example, you can use your smartphone as a GPS device, to request a car service directly to your house and to shop for a new car online, seeing the prices other people paid in real time. In banking, we’ve seen the transition from teller to the ATM to online banking, smartphone banking and now, using your smartphone as a smart pay device. Underscoring all of these innovations is the desire to make whatever experience the consumer is engaging in easier, simpler and more personalized.
Healthcare is no different. Across the healthcare continuum, companies like ours are finding new and innovative ways to enhance member engagement and participation in the healthcare journey, particularly through computerized or mobile devices. Think about how healthcare has changed over the past 50 years – house calls from doctors to office visits to telephone triage and now, computerized therapy and text therapy.
At Magellan, we’ve invested in a unique type of computerized therapy – Computerized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CCBT) – to help individuals seek the therapy they need, in the comfort, convenience and privacy of their own home. Our CCBT programs were originally developed more than 20 years ago, for stand-alone personal computer use, but have since been developed for use on the internet and mobile devices, in both English and Spanish.
The following five conditions make up more than 90 percent of behavioral health complaints in adults, and are present in more than 25 percent of adults:
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Substance Abuse
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Within each condition, studies have shown CCBT to be effective at reducing symptoms and severity. Importantly, our CCBT programs have undergone clinical trials involving more than 1,000 patients and have received endorsements and recognition from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the United Kingdom’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence, Accreditation Canada and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s National Registry. Underscoring all of the studies and reviews, what can members expect? Sixty-nine percent of users show meaningful improvement within 30 days.
But CCBT isn’t just for members. We’ve found that providers can use a tool called Smart Screening to help screen individuals and triage them to the most appropriate levels of care on the CCBT platform, and in person, for the most serious cases. Various levels of screening can help direct individuals to CCBT, directly to an in-person counselor or a mix of both. Through this triage system, 90 percent of engaged participants rate this program as helpful and useful, and 75 percent of individuals actually prefer a non-medication care option when asked.
The most important thing about innovation in any industry – healthcare, banking or electronics – is refusing to rest on your laurels. There are new start-ups launched everyday whose mission it is to disrupt the status quo and provide new ways of doing things. As healthcare evolves, we plan to do the same.
