HJBR Jul/Aug 2021

40 JUL / AUG 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE COLUMN INSURANCE A RECENT McKinsey report showed that in 2019, only 11% of U.S. consumers used telehealth, while today, 76% of consum- ers are interested in telehealth services with almost 50% actively using them to replace in-person healthcare visits. In ad- dition, nationally, telehealth claims saw an increase of 2,980% from September 2019 to September 2020. Every practice has or is still considering what the balance of telemedicine and telehealth will be going forward. Growing Mental Health Needs According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during their life- time, more than 50% of Americans will be Telegraph, Telephone, TeleHEALTH Answering the Call for Increased Behavioral Health Demand with Virtual Care diagnosed with a mental health disorder such as anxiety or depression, with one in five U.S. adults experiencing a mental ill- ness in a given year. Yet, despite the prev- alence of mental and behavioral health needs, access to treatment is often out of reach, particularly for vulnerable pop- ulations including racial and ethnic mi- norities, children and rural communities, making the potential reach and impact of telehealth an effective alternative to in-person care. In the southern states alone, 46% of all February 2021 telehealth claims were for mental health conditions with gener- al anxiety, major depressive, adjustment, attention-deficit hyperactivity and bipolar disorders representing the top five diag- noses. For Louisiana Medicaid recipients, telehealth offers a way to help close the gap on barriers to access such as lack of child care and transportation, or hour- ly-wage employment and, in particular, increase utilization of much-needed be- havioral health services. The benefits of telehealth in a behav- ioral health application are numerous. In particular, telehealth can: Improve patient engagement Treating patients proactively includes finding new ways for them to engage in self-care between clinical visits. Using telehealth as a remote monitoring tool is Healthcare providers have been steadily increasing their use of telehealth over the past decade, but by all accounts, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a defining catalyst.