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988 Readiness Q&A With Bamboo Health’s Gina Gibson

Posted on July 19, 2022November 14, 2022 by Grace Keeling

“988,” the three-digit, easy-to-remember behavioral health version of 911, launched this month – connecting individuals via call, text, or chat to regional crisis centers through the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. With the switch expecting to raise awareness and call volume, Bamboo Health is kicking off a 988 Q&A Series to provide an overview of the current crisis management landscape, where the nation stands, and how we’re partnering with states through our technology solutions.

In our inaugural Q&A, we sit down with Gina Gibson, senior director of behavioral health solutions, to discuss the upcoming launch of the 988 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, infrastructure readiness at the state level, and how Bamboo Health (partnered with its affiliate, OpenBeds Inc.) is well-positioned to support interoperability preparation for this groundbreaking behavioral health initiative.

Let’s start off talking about your position at Bamboo Health. What are your primary roles and responsibilities? What about the job most excites you?

At Bamboo Health, I serve as the crisis subject matter expert, partnering with states to design their crisis management systems and matching their need to the most appropriate Bamboo Health solution. What excites me the most about my role is that I get to work cross functionally across the enterprise, consult with states, and provide tangible solutions to real-world problems that directly impact individuals daily.

You bring extensive boots on the ground experience to Bamboo Health having served as chief operating officer of the contractor for the Georgia Crisis and Access Line. Can you talk a bit more about that experience and what it taught you about behavioral health resources needs?

I’ve worked in the behavioral health crisis management space for the past 11 years, most recently as chief operating officer of the contractor operating the statewide crisis call center hub in Georgia (GCAL) prior to joining Bamboo Health. As the COO, I oversaw the non-clinical administrative and program operations for GCAL (part of the NSPL network) and for blended mobile crisis response services serving roughly 2/3 of the state. I also had the opportunity to work with an Administrative Services Organization (ASO) partner and the state on 988 service delivery plans for both programs. It was during this time that I got to experience first-hand not only how great the need for behavioral health treatment resources truly is, but also the many obstacles that prevent or delay individuals from getting the help they needed in a timely fashion. For context, during my tenure at the center we had a staff of around 100 at any given time and averaged a volume of around 250,000 calls annually. The State of Georgia has funded this statewide call center since 2006 and, together with the entire crisis continuum structure, today serves as a model for other states seeking to build a similar model.

In your previous role, what did you see as the biggest obstacles when it came to connecting individuals in need with available behavioral health resources?

I think we can all agree that having enough staff in place to support behavioral health resource demand has been and will continue to be the number one obstacle we face when we look to address the escalating behavioral health crisis. Barriers to care such as lack of transportation or simply not knowing which resources are available and how to access them present challenges as well.

The good news is that technology, such as Bamboo Health’s Crisis Management System exists and is well-positioned to help 988 crisis centers, and others, to quickly identify available resources and facilitate individuals access to the treatment they need. This can free up staff to take even more calls or expedite coordination where someone needs more intensive treatment.

988 is positioned as a huge step forward towards addressing our nation’s behavioral health crisis. What about the initiative are your most enthusiastic about?

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network is an amazing initiative. What may surprise you is that this resource has been available for some time, launching in 2005. Since then, calls grew from 50,000 in the first year to over 2.3 million in 2020. The goal for 988 is to make it easier for more people to access a lifeline center. When people call, text, or chat 988, they will be connected to trained staff that are part of the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network.

The challenge that we see now, and will continue to see now that 988 has launched, is finding the workforce and making sure states have the adequate number of providers to support that network. At a minimum, someone needs to be there to answer the phone as 75-80% of incoming calls can be deescalated by call center representatives. For the rest of incoming calls, crisis call center personnel need access to additional resources such as the ability to dispatch mobile response teams to address individual needs, ensuring that callers get connected with the right level of care when and where they need it the most. Other callers may benefit from a referral to an inpatient or outpatient treatment facility and call centers need the ability to easily identify these resources and connect callers appropriately.

There is a lot of chatter about state preparation for 988. As someone who has worked at a behavioral health crisis center, what do you think states need to consider in order to make 988 work well?

My biggest piece of advice to states is that they shouldn’t try to do everything all at once. The top priority needs to be having staff ready and prepared to answer the phone when it rings. If enough licensed clinicians aren’t available, non-clinical paraprofessionals and/or volunteers can be trained and clinically supervised to do the work. These individuals need to have the passion to help. Sometimes a caller just wants someone on the other end to listen so they can tell their story.

Growing the provider network, incentivizing providers for performance and expanding/enhancing service delivery; as well as securing a continuous funding stream beyond time-limited grants are critical as well.

Having the right technology infrastructure in place seems like a critical step in the implementation process of 988. Why do you think some states are more prepared than others?

When it comes to 988, preparedness is not going to happen overnight. Some states already have a well-defined statewide “no wrong door” behavioral health system, while others are diligently working to identify and add the missing complement of service providers. Regardless of the state’s level of readiness, it’s essential that the technology used to support this initiative be a compliment and not a hinderance to users. When call agents can assign individuals to appropriate care quickly and accurately, clinical efficiency and patient outcomes improve.

Technology can help connect those dots threading the response process together. This is why interoperability is so important. For example, a crisis center employee should not have to go into multiple systems or gather extensive demographic data to help a patient access care. Instead, a native electronic health record system should be able to interface with a technology system. This is why states should seek interoperable solutions such as OpenBeds^® for a bed registry and closed loop referral system and, built off the OpenBeds platform, the Crisis Management System for digital intake and assessment, as well as the ability to dispatch mobile crisis teams using GPS-enabled technology to get situational awareness about the availability of treatment resources using digital networks – all within one system.

It’s also worth highlighting that digitizing the crisis care continuum enables us to track how we are doing at connecting people to definitive assessment and treatment in order to drive improvements to the care delivery system. Nobody has a clear-eyed view of the system today, but technology tools are well-poised to help hold all stakeholders accountable to meeting the goals of the 988 initiative. This includes connecting people to definitive behavioral health assessments and treatments and keeping people out of the medical and criminal justice systems. Technology will also help us prevent people from re-entering the crisis care system.

In your opinion, how is Bamboo Health and OpenBeds helping states in terms of 988 readiness?

Bamboo Health has deep experience delivering behavioral health solutions at the state level for over a decade (and working with states in general for over 20 years). With the OpenBeds and Crisis Management solutions specifically, we have launched or are about to launch complementary clinician and public-facing portals to connect providers/consumers to SUD and mental health treatment in 14 states, working with approximately 1,000 treatment providers and several hundred hospitals across these states.

As a result of being deeply embedded in the delivery of behavioral health services at the local level, Bamboo Health and OpenBeds understand firsthand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to address these community needs. What is unique about our team is that we can help evaluate our customers’ and partners’ pain points. Then, we match technology solutions to not only address their needs but also assist and aid users to make the most informed decisions possible across the individual’s care continuum.

That’s why we are well-positioned to serve as a valuable technology partner to states during their 988 roll out. For starters, we have demonstrable behavioral health experience, and we understand the space from both a physical and mental health perspective. This is evident in our technology offerings and more specifically with our Crisis Management System capabilities, which leverage the foundational OpenBeds platform where referring providers can communicate with receiving providers, see bed availability in real-time, and refer patients to the appropriate level of care.

We have partnered with state government leaders to help them develop plans and infrastructure to support their communities’ adoption of 988 services, along with expert guidance around securing federal funding, to ensure a smooth launch. We also offer ongoing support across a state’s entire 988 ecosystem.

For Additional Information

If you would like to learn more about 988 or how Bamboo Health can help support infrastructure development efforts for the national behavioral health lifeline, please check out our crisis management playbook.

How is Your State Supporting 988 Crisis Response?

Posted on July 14, 2022November 14, 2022 by Grace Keeling

With the current state of behavioral health in the U.S., improved crisis response support for patients and providers is crucial. About 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness and over 26 million individuals with a mental illness go untreated.

The demand for improved collaboration and access to care continues to grow with 988, the new three-digit dialing code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, launching on July 16. Individuals in crisis will be able to call or text 988 to be immediately connected to trained mental health professionals at over 180 regional centers.

OpenBeds has become a technology partner for several states to ensure they are prepared for the influx of requests through the 988 system in the future.

Our Crisis Management System, a solution through OpenBeds, connects the public, crisis call center professionals, mobile crisis response teams, local law enforcement agencies, hospitals, and treatment providers in real time to help individuals get the help they need quickly. Through this solution, crisis call center professionals can see availability and exact location of local mobile crisis response teams. Crisis call center counselors and providers can also track providers’ bed and appointment inventory and response steps and time stamps of a care event.

Through OpenBeds’ Crisis Management System, crisis call center professionals can assess the risk of the patient. For mild to moderate risk patients, call center counselors can use OpenBeds to find available beds at inpatient or outpatient treatment centers.

Previous technology forced emergency department (ED) providers to bounce between several applications to manually refer patients to behavioral health treatment centers. ED providers had trouble collecting real-time bed availability information for these facilities, such as what types of services were available and if the patient would be able to get the care they needed at the treatment center. This took up valuable time that could be spent caring for the patient and transporting them to the respective treatment center.

Now, with the OpenBeds solution, this time-consuming process has been eliminated for referring providers. OpenBeds allows providers to track real-time bed availability, easily refer patients to treatment facilities, and access referral patterns. With more streamlined care coordination, ED providers can ensure their patients are receiving the best care, leading to improved patient outcomes.

If there is a serious non-life or life-threatening risk to the patient, crisis call center professionals can see the availability and exact location of mobile crisis response teams to dispatch them to the patient’s location. From there, the mobile crisis response team can assess the risk of the patient and use OpenBeds to refer them to a behavioral health treatment center or transfer them to the ED.

Although 988 is being implemented nationally, each state is responsible for creating their own crisis response infrastructure. The federal government allocated $282 million to support the 180 regional crisis call centers, however, states must create their own plans to ensure their 988 program is strong enough to meet demand. The new number is estimated to help 6 million to 12 million individuals in the first year alone.

In addition to OpenBeds and the Crisis Management System, Treatment Connection is a patient-facing online assessment that helps individuals and their loved ones find mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment near them. Treatment Connection can anonymously or non-anonymously refer patients to appropriate treatment centers based on the results from the self-assessment.

Like many other states, Delaware was impacted greatly by the opioid epidemic and experienced the second-highest drug overdose mortality rate in the country. Due to the high demand of behavioral health services, the state turned to OpenBeds for an easy-to-use, all-encompassing patient referral application.

Since the implementation of OpenBeds in October 2018, Delaware became the first state to make 100,000 referrals through the Delaware Treatment and Referral Network.

“This milestone represents a systematic improvement in identifying and treating individuals with substance use disorders. … That is 100,000 times where a pathway to treatment was made available for someone so they didn’t have to end up in the emergency room or worse.”

-Joanna Champney, Director of the Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health

OpenBeds is dedicated to supporting states and their crisis management efforts with OpenBeds, Treatment Connection, and the Crisis Management System through the rollout of 988 and beyond.

To learn more about how OpenBeds can support your state, visit our OpenBeds page.

Six Key Statistics on the Behavioral Health Crisis in the U.S.

Posted on June 21, 2022June 9, 2023 by Grace Keeling

The behavioral health crisis in the U.S. has reached a critical point in history. With mental health and substance use disorders on the rise — coupled with the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — the need for better, quicker access to life-changing behavioral health treatment has never been greater.

Unfortunately, millions of individuals go without seeking mental health treatment. According to a report from Mental State of the World, 45% of Americans who needed clinical-level mental health treatment did not seek it due to lack of access to treatment, lack of confidence in treatment, lack of affordability and access, preference of self-help, and the stigma surrounding mental health.

Although our society has made strides in eliminating the stigma and improving access to care, there are still many obstacles we must conquer to better the state of behavioral health in the country.

Here are some statistics showing the magnitude of the behavioral health crisis in America today.

1. About 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness found in a 12-month period, the most common mental illnesses among all U.S. adults were anxiety disorders (19%), depression (8%), post-traumatic stress disorder (4%), and dual diagnosis of multiple mental health disorders (4%).

2. There were 107,622 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdose deaths increased by almost 15% from 2020. However, the percentage in 2021 decreased by half, as overdose deaths rose about 30% from 2019 to 2020.

3. About 21 to 29% of chronic pain patients misuse their prescribed opioids.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse also reported around 8 to 12% of individuals using opioids for chronic pain develop an opioid use disorder.

4. Almost 46,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020.

This figure means that every 11 minutes, a life is taken by suicide. Additionally, in 2020, there were an estimated 1.2 million suicide attempts. Suicide remains in the top nine leading causes of death for Americans ages 10-64, and the second leading cause of death in Americans ages 10-14 and 25-34.

5. Over 26 million individuals with a mental health illness go untreated.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean individuals with mental illness do not seek the help they need. According to Mental Health America, about 22% of all adults with a mental illness reported they were not able to receive the treatment they needed ¬¬— and this figure has not changed since 2011.

6. Each year, around 9.5% of Americans ages 18 and over will suffer from a depressive illness such as major depression, bipolar disorder, or dysthymia (persistent depressive disorder).

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, women are almost twice as likely to experience major depression than men, but men and women are equally as likely to experience bipolar disorder. The average age that most individuals develop major depression is in their mid-20s.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is aiming to change the way Americans access behavioral health treatment. Starting July 16, 2022, in the states that are operationally ready, Americans will be able to dial or text 988 —the new phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — to be instantly connected to mental health professionals at over 180 regional crisis centers.

“As we continue to confront the impact of the pandemic, investing in this critical tool is key to protecting the health and wellbeing of countless Americans — and saving lives. Giving the states a tool to prevent suicide and support people in crisis is essential to our HHS mission of protecting the health and wellbeing of everyone in our nation.”

-Xavier Becerra, Secretary, United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

This quick three-digit phone number aims to improve the behavioral health state of the country and provide critical healthcare when individuals need it most. The efforts to make behavioral health treatment more accessible do not stop here.

Bamboo Health has partnered with several states to support them during the launch of 988 with our Crisis Management System solution. By providing valuable technological assistance to coordinate care, we can play a role in improving the staggering behavioral health crisis in the country.

To learn more about how Bamboo Health can support your state’s crisis management efforts, contact us today.

The Importance of ED Visit Follow-Ups for Patients with Multiple Chronic Conditions testing

Posted on June 2, 2022March 18, 2025 by Grace Keeling

Many adults living with more than one chronic condition experience gaps in their care as they receive treatment across multiple providers, including ED (emergency department) clinicians, primary care physicians, and other specialists.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 1 in 4 adults has multiple chronic conditions. Additionally, about 3 in 4 adults 65 and over have more than one chronic condition.

Medicare Beneficiaries with Multiple Chronic Conditions


Number of Chronic Conditions	Percentage of Beneficiaries
2-3	30.1%
4-5	20.9%
6 or more	14.5%

Note. Data from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). 2014. “Multiple Chronic Conditions.” Retrieved June 1, 2022, from https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Chronic-Conditions/MCC_Main.html

Many hospitals and ED providers fail to send medical records to outpatient providers after discharge. This gap in care coordination after an ED visit can result in adverse outcomes in patients with multiple chronic conditions.

According to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), Medicare beneficiaries are at a higher risk after an ED visit due to overall body function, multiple medication use, and audio and/or visual impairments. In turn, this can increase the likelihood of readmission and death. A study from the Annals of Emergency Medicine found older adults showed an average mortality rate of 10% and ED readmission rate of 24% after an ED discharge.

NCQA also found many adults with multiple chronic conditions do not have a follow-up service from their healthcare providers within 7 days of an ED discharge. In 2020, about 57.2% of Medicare HMO beneficiaries and 59.6% of Medicare PPO beneficiaries had a follow-up after an ED visit.

To prevent readmission and other health complications after discharge, proper communication and coordination between providers is crucial. Bamboo Health’s Pings solution notifies a patient’s primary care physician of a care event, such as an ED visit, in real time. From there, physicians can communicate with their patient in a timely manner to schedule necessary follow-up visits to possibly prevent hospital readmission and other complications.

Pings patient notifications can help ED providers, primary care physicians, and chronic condition specialists stay informed about their patients’ health and in turn, improve overall patient outcomes. By connecting the entire care team, providers can better support whole person care for their patients managing multiple chronic conditions.

To learn more about Pings and how it can help your organization, click here.

Leveraging Care Coordination for Success Under the CMS Kidney Care Choices Model

Posted on June 2, 2022June 9, 2023 by Grace Keeling

Kidney Care Shifts Towards Value Based-Care

The face of kidney care in the United States is experiencing a seismic shift, rapidly moving away from a traditional fee-for-service model and toward a value based-care model centered around patient outcomes. While this sentiment is true for most other subsets of healthcare, it’s particularly pronounced in kidney care due to many significant efforts Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has made in recent years to improve quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and End-stage Renal Disease (ESRD).

These efforts include the ESRD Treatment Choices (ETC) Model, as well as the value-based care Kidney Care Choices (KCC) model, which offers four payment options including the CMS Kidney Care First (KCF) Option, Comprehensive Kidney Care Contracting (CKCC) Graduated Option, CKCC Professional Option, and CKCC Global Option. Building upon the existing Comprehensive End Stage Renal Disease Care Model structure, KCC adds strong financial incentives for providers. In turn, KCC is encouraging nephrologists to increase their care coordination efforts in pursuit of later and more effective starts on dialysis, and an increased number of successful kidney transplants.

To achieve success under the KCC program, providers caring for CKD and ESRD patients should focus on:

Reducing Acute Hospitalization Utilization and the Total Cost of Care: This can be done by preventing avoidable readmissions and preventing unnecessary emergency department (ED) utilization. In the KCC program, doing so will result in greater savings versus the benchmark.
Ensuring Top Performance in Quality Measures: To maximize performance adjustments and earn back quality withholds, it’s important that participants in the KCC models provide high-quality care by engaging beneficiaries over time. For example, the time after an acute event when a patient may be seeking care or open to behavior changes, offers a meaningful opportunity to make strides in closing gaps.
Minimizing Leakage Rates: KCC participants can minimize outmigration (or “leakage”) rates through the identification of beneficiary utilization outside of their practice and engagement of the patient with appropriate care in their practice. To achieve high beneficiary retention rates, KCC participants should engage beneficiaries at key touch points during their care journey.

Actionable Insights Begin with Real-time ADT Data

Accomplishing these expanding measures of care starts with having the proper tools, resources, and data to identify in real time when beneficiaries are discharged from the hospital or admitted to a post-acute facility. From there, KCC program participants can reach out to the patient or facility to ensure the appropriate post-discharge care is delivered, educate the patient on resources and appropriate ED utilization, or work with the admitting facility to ensure the appropriate length of stay (LOS).

At Bamboo Health, our extensive infrastructure and network support the exchange of applications, information, and actionable insights in more than one billion patient encounters per year nationwide to provide kidney care providers with the ability to thrive under the KCC program. We enable provider success in KCC and other value-based kidney care models by optimizing encounter efficiency, reducing avoidable utilization, and ensuring patients are receiving critical care when they need it.

Our Pings solution for real-time admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) data provides visibility into patient care events that can be used to help drive targeted interventions, facilitate reduction in acute hospital utilization and total per capita cost, as well as support quality performance improvement and beneficiary retention. These real-time insights into patients’ care journeys also allow providers and clinicians to collaborate on shared patient cases for the delivery of comprehensive value-based care in alignment with the KCC program model.

Contact Bamboo Health for More Information

For additional information, download Bamboo Health’s Pings for Kidney Care Overview or read about our partnership with Strive Health, the national leader in value-based kidney care, to optimize care coordination for improved kidney disease patient outcomes throughout Illinois, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Michigan.

Behavioral Health Care Coordination in Action

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Grace Keeling

The following blog post is an excerpt from Bamboo Health’s 2021 Annual Impact Report.

Amber, 32-years-old, has been in recovery from opioid use disorder for three years. She was able to quit heroin with the support of individual and group therapy in combination with buprenorphine. Last year, she started working full time again. When Amber’s father suddenly passes away; however, her grief is overwhelming. She turns back to heroin to cope, but with the increasing fentanyl in the supply, Amber overdoses. A bystander calls 911 and responding medics revive her. At the ED, the providers treat her acute needs, provide information about drug treatment facilities, and discharge her. A week later, following her father’s funeral, Amber uses again, this time alone, with no one to call for help when she overdoses. Her behavioral health treatment center finds out about the first overdose more than a month later through insurance claim data, but it’s too late.

While Amber is not a real person, unfortunately, scenarios like hers happen every day, fueling unprecedented fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. Complex problems like this require innovation from various angles, but in collaboration, not in silos.

Bamboo Health delivers products that support real-time care collaboration, promoting better outcomes for patients and making progress against the mental health and substance use crisis that has cut too many lives short and left family and friends grieving.

Our Behavioral Health Care Coordination (BHCC) solution facilitates provider-to-provider communication and coordination. Embedded in the clinical workflow at the point of care, the platform displays real-time data often disconnected from current EHRs, with decision support and patient analytics.

Here is how Amber’s situation could have been different through our BHCC solution. This time when she overdoses, her ED providers check the PDMP, integrated into their EHR, and see that she has been on a steady dose of buprenorphine. The BHCC platform also gives her treating providers visibility of her care team at the behavioral healthcare treatment center. At the same time, the treatment center receives a Ping, alerting them that Amber has been admitted to the ED. The treatment center connects with the ED providers to guide her care while admitted and talks to Amber once she is stabilized. The treatment center and ED providers discuss Amber’s transfer to outpatient treatment, which can be facilitated by the OpenBeds solution to find near real-time availability of beds. They determine that an appointment the next day is the best course of action. She’s discharged with her buprenorphine prescription continuing and an appointment set for the next morning. Her treatment center connects her with a peer counselor to help her navigate the next week until the funeral and continue regular appointments until the mental health crisis eases in the coming months.

The BHCC solution enables communication and collaboration missing from the first scenario to give Amber a better chance of success on her path to recovery.

To read our full 2021 Annual Impact Report, click here.

Connecting Payers and Providers to Enhance the Delivery of Care

Posted on May 24, 2022June 9, 2023 by Grace Keeling

Payers and Provider Care Collaboration Drives Improved Outcomes

Today, payers, including private and public health insurance companies, government-run Medicare and Medicaid, and a variety of managed care plans, are finding ways to expand their role in healthcare. In addition to their traditional functions such as collecting their members’ premium payments, negotiating rates for services, and paying a percentage of provider claims, they are beginning to influence actual care delivery.

When you think about it—even patients who, at times, may have seen payers as barriers to care—it makes some sense. Payers often have the clearest visibility of longitudinal medical records, particularly for individuals who have been members of the same plans for years. This is because, for almost every care event, a claim is filed, and payers accumulate detailed member histories. Oftentimes, payers are more apprised of an individual’s health, lifestyle, and utilization patterns than primary care physicians and other care team members.

Their motivation for this shift is clear. Payers desire better health outcomes, which can lower their costs. When outcomes are improved and costs reduced, their members are healthier, increasingly satisfied, and more likely to be retained. Quite simply, their business depends largely on the administration of care, so why wouldn’t they be more involved, even if their involvement triggers skepticism in some minds?

Healthcare providers have a similar motivation. They also seek better outcomes and related benefits, including the positive impact on their reputation, greater patient satisfaction, the opportunity to execute more effective capitation contracts and valued-based contracts, and even financial incentives. Certain groups, like accountable care organizations participating in the CMS’s Medicare Advantage Plans, can be financially rewarded for their quality of care.

How Is Collaboration Improving Outcomes?

So how exactly are payers and providers coming together to administer care and improve outcomes? And where is this happening?

In a McKinsey & Company article titled “Innovation and value: What payer-led managed-care models may look like,” Emily Clark, Jennifer Rots, and Anna Stolyarova wrote the following:

“Payer-led activity in care delivery has continued over the past five years. M&A [mergers and acquisitions], strategic partnerships, and affiliations between payers, providers, and technology companies have continued as payers seek to expand their role in reimaging care models. As our prior research indicated, these models reorient traditional operations focused on financing healthcare around an integrated model that prioritizes health, efficiency, and customer experience.

In these models, payers take a substantially more active role in the health and healthcare of their members through one of three approaches: provider enablement via a management-services organization (MSO) or other services organization, a platform-based ecosystem convener, or direct ownership of care-delivery assets.”

How Bamboo Health Can Help

There is one key phrase in that explanation that stands out to us here at Bamboo Health: “… payers take a substantially more active role in the health and healthcare of their members…” It stands out because our company aims to improve whole person care for patients across the care continuum. If doing that means better connecting payers and providers—and fostering engagement between them—we’re all in. We’re working to accomplish this via our first-of-its-kind Behavioral Health Care Coordination solution.

Think of our solution as a vast network of payers and providers across the nation, working together in one platform that provides a holistic view of people’s health. Through this platform, they can do the following:

Communicate about members/patients.
Access near real-time patient data and analytics—including prescription drug monitoring data—directly in clinical workflows.
Be notified when patients experience care events.
Refer patients to behavioral health facilities.
Assess the efficiencies and outcomes of their care plans.

It is an ecosystem that helps both parties redefine how they work in concert to administer value-based care.

“In our eyes, payers have the opportunity to help providers better support their patients. Where this collaboration has occurred, quality of care and patient satisfaction has improved. Our role is to empower collaboration with the alerts, data, and insights providers need to offer their patients the personalized care they deserve,” said Christopher Skowronek, VP, Corporate Strategy and Partnerships at Bamboo Health.

Bamboo Health is committed to remaining at the forefront of payer-provider collaboration. Our Behavioral Health Care Coordination solution changes the dynamic for both parties—and patients. To learn more about it and what it can do for your state or organization, click here.

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