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Use Case Spotlight: How Kintegra Health is improving transitions of care and succeeding in value-based care programs through real-time ADT notifications

Posted on by Grace Keeling

Kintegra Health is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that provides healthcare services, health education, and preventive care services to patients, regardless of their ability to pay. Kintegra has over 25 practices across ten counties in North Carolina and offers a wide range of services including adult and pediatric primary care, dental care, vision care, behavioral health counseling, pharmacy services, chronic disease education programs, Medication Assistance Treatment, nutritional counseling, women’s screening clinics, and HIV/AIDS case management.

We sat down with Lavondia Alexander, Chief Quality Officer at Kintegra to discuss how her team approaches the shift towards value-based care, challenges they face in this endeavor, and how Bamboo Health helps to improve their care coordination efforts and patient outcomes.

What are some of the trends you are seeing in the shift towards value-based care?

The healthcare delivery system has evolved. There is now a focus on treating patients holistically through proper care coordination amongst varying providers and community partners. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) led the innovation of value–based care through various programs such as Meaningful Use and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). There has been a shift where payment for quality is emphasized. There are similar movements for Medicaid and commercial payers participating in value-based care programs and ACOs.

As an FQHC, we serve as a safety net of healthcare for the uninsured and underserved populations. Historically, FQHCs have had limited opportunities in participating in value-based initiatives. Fortunately, we are now able to participate in value-based care reform because our commercial population is increasing, and Medicaid is moving towards value-based care efforts in which we can participate. Kintegra began its journey into value–based care through participating in quality management through incentive programs that included our uninsured population.

We have found that it is challenging to provide value-based care without access to data and analytics regarding how effective we are in coordinating care for our patients. Since this need is identified across the healthcare delivery system, population health analytics tools have become very popular and are imperative to include in your operational plan.

What are some of the care coordination initiatives your organization focuses on?

We have been steering our approach to value–based care for a while. As mentioned earlier, it is difficult without access to data and analytics regarding how effective we are in coordinating care for our patients. We have partnered with varying population software platforms, including Bamboo Health, to assist in this endeavor. FQHCs have to report varying outcomes to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to maintain our funding, including, but not limited to, patient clinical outcomes, cost of care for our patients, patient access, and what services and treatments we are providing them. Previously, our main focuses were on care gaps and trying to help manage chronic conditions.

We joined the Carolina Medical Home Network ACO in 2017 and then the CHESS Value ACO this year. These partnerships allowed us to better put care plans in place, focus on patients getting annual wellness visits, figure out how to risk stratify based on utilization, and analyze admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) data.

What challenges has your organization faced in succeeding under these initiatives?

Despite establishing those beneficial care coordination and workflow processes through our ACO partnerships, we still struggled with transitions of care. We were dependent on our local hospitals to send ADT data every day, as well as our payers to send it via claims data, which was on a monthly basis with a three-month lag. Even once we received the data, we didn’t have the resources to properly act on it nor the ability to confidently know who to reach out to regarding the outdated patient information.

How has Bamboo Health helped play a role in overcoming some of these challenges?

The ADT data we previously received was contingent on information the local hospitals had regarding our patients. This usually included a primary care provider’s name or the location the patient received their care. The ADT data we get now from Bamboo Health is for our entire population across the ten counties we serve.

The notifications include when our patients go to an outside facility, are in real-time, and are hosted all in one place. We didn’t have this kind of real-time data in a sufficient and efficient manner prior to Bamboo Health. Our staff no longer have extended time frames to follow up and ask a patient how they are or remind them about Kintegra’s available services so that they can conveniently come to us versus the emergency room.

Additionally, the Pings give us the most up-to-date phone number and address so that when we reach out to the patient, we have the best chance of reaching them. We are really happy to get this kind of insight from the Bamboo Health platform and look forward to continued learnings and success through our partnership.

That’s a Wrap on the Inaugural ViVE 2022 Event

Posted on by Grace Keeling

Bamboo Health was proud to be part of the inaugural ViVE event, which just wrapped up in Miami March 6-9, 2022. Our team participated as attendees, booth exhibitors, and a speaker. It was great to catch up with customers, partners, media, and colleagues in person at the event and learn more about how health technology is working to transform the future of healthcare. We were also excited to see so many smiles again (around 5,000!) with recent relaxation of CDC guidelines for COVID.

 

Our Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Nishi Rawat was part of a panel presentation at ViVE on Monday, March 7, titled, “Whole Person Care 101: CH. 1 Behavioral Health.” Bamboo Health’s Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Nishi Rawat joined two other panel members – Dr. Nina Vasan, Chief Medical Officer of Real, and Dr. Ian Tong, Chief Medical Officer of Included Health. Read our summary of the panel highlights in this blog post.

Our team members also staffed an exhibitor booth where they had the opportunity to see some of our customers face-to-face, chat with other health technology companies about future collaboration, and share the work being done at Bamboo Health with future partners and collaborators.

Our team also caught as many of the panel sessions and general sessions as possible. Some of the big themes we heard included:

  • Care collaboration
  • Virtual care and telehealth
  • Data
  • Health equity
  • And more!

With just a few days to rest, the Bamboo Health team is gearing up to head back to Florida, this time in Orlando, for the 2022 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition. If we didn’t catch you at ViVE (or even if we did), we hope to see you at HIMSS! To learn more about Bamboo Health, our work to support real-time care collaboration, and the progress we’re making to improve whole person care, meet with our team at booth: #4115, March 14 – 18, 2022, in Orlando, FL. We also invite you to attend a presentation by Bamboo Health’s Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development Jitin Asnaani’s “Harnessing the Power of Interoperability to Cultivate Whole Person Care Collaboration across Providers, Patients, and Payers” on Tuesday, March 15 at 2:45 PM as part of the Interoperability Showcase Theater.

Dr. Nishi Rawat shares her perspective and Bamboo Health’s behavioral health initiatives during panel presentation at ViVE

Posted on by Grace Keeling

Behavioral health and technology took the spotlight during a panel presentation at ViVE on Monday, March 7, titled, “Whole Person Care 101: CH. 1 Behavioral Health.” Bamboo Health’s Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Nishi Rawat joined two other panel members – Dr. Nina Vasan, Chief Medical Officer of Real, and Dr. Ian Tong, Chief Medical Officer of Included Health. Marshall E. Jackson, Jr. from McDermott Will & Emery LLP served as moderator.

The panel covered some of the issues that have led to the behavioral health and substance use crisis – with more Americans facing a mental illness while drug overdose deaths surged to 104,000 lives lost in the last year.

Dr. Rawat shared her perspective that stigma has left behavioral health behind and that breaking down those barriers is critical to moving the needle.

“Stigma is driving the lack of access to evidence-based treatment. It’s driving the lack of recognition of evidence-based treatment. We know what works for many mental health conditions. We know what works for opioid use disorder based on three decades worth of research and yet people can’t get access to evidence-based treatment. Stigma drives the lack of payment parity,” said Dr. Rawat. “Behavioral health is woefully behind physical health. When it comes to access to salient data at the point of care, physical health has figured that out for the most part. We’re being inundated with data at the point of care as physicians. Now we’ve moved on to trying to figure out how to make that data usable. We have to work on data connectivity as well as usability in parallel for behavioral health instead of serially, as we did with physical health. And that’s exactly what we’re doing at Bamboo Health right now.”

Dr. Rawat also shared what she believes are the three types of pain that have led to the substance use epidemic: physical, mental, and economic pain.

  • Physical: “Prescribing by physicians over the past two decades led to the first wave of the opioid epidemic. Now, we’re doing better. We’re getting tighter, but the pendulum is starting to swing back in that other direction. We have to keep our eye on the ball. We have to make sure that non-opioid pain management mechanisms are available to the masses.”
  • Mental: “Prior to the pandemic, 50% of Americans said that they feel alone, that they feel like nobody really understands them in their lives. That’s only been magnified by the pandemic. And we know, there’s been an increase in the prevalence of mental health conditions, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress by 30 to 40% in the past 18 months.”
  • Economic: “It’s something that we’re not talking enough about. If you speak to political leaders in the Midwest, they will tell you that the opioid epidemic is ravaging their communities because of number one, idle hands, especially among young males, but also this gap between the haves and have nots, the more the doubling of the gap between the people who have something and don’t have something, and the resentment associated with that gap.”

Finally, the panel covered a broad discussion of promising initiatives in the near future and how their companies were doing work to support those efforts. Dr. Rawat highlighted Bamboo Health’s focus to support initiatives around substance use. She shared four pillars for addressing substance use which include: prevention, access to treatment, harm reduction, and recovery support. Bamboo Health has technology solutions to help support the first two categories.

  • Prevention: “We are the prescription drug modern program for 45 states. For the prescribers out there, when you’re about to prescribe a controlled substance, you check the prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP). We provide software that tells you whether or not the person in front of you has been prescribed or dispensed a controlled substance in the recent past. In the states where checking the PDMP system is mandated, which is about two dozen states, they’ve seen a reduction in opioid prescribing and dispensations, and increased use of non-opioid alternatives for pain management. Finally, they also have a reduction in deaths related to opioids with the exception of fentanyl. This is over an eight-year period. So, that’s fantastic. That shows you the power of technology to prevent.”
  • Access to treatment: “We also are very much focused on treatment. We work with 14 states right now with our OpenBeds system. What we do is essentially create a digital village. These are vexing problems, right? It takes a village, it takes multiple stakeholders across the private sector, the public sector. What Bamboo Health does is bring all of these stakeholders together on this one technology system, so that those who refer into mental health and substance use disorder treatment, they can see the availability of services. They have situational awareness. They can use the tool to get decision support as medical clinicians. You can send digital or referrals and do much more.”
    • Results: “We closely track the people who are being pushed through the cracks, and we report on those data out to the county, the local organizations. In the State in Delaware, we average 800 to 900 referrals per week. When we launched in 2018, there were 200 to 300, and now we see 800 to 900 referrals. We know more people are accessing care, and Delaware is actually one of three states that saw a decrease in their opioid overdose deaths by 7%. Across the US, they went up by 16%. The Lieutenant Governor and the state credit the increase in access to care and decrease in overdose deaths to our system. That’s the power of technology to bring people together. There is still lots of work to do, but the challenges are not insurmountable.”

Re-Imagining Health at HIMSS: Bamboo Health Fosters Interoperable Care Coordination to Improve Physical and Behavioral Healthcare

Posted on by Grace Keeling

The theme of the 2022 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition centers around re-imagining health – a focus that resonates exceptionally well with us at Bamboo Health. In pursuit of our vision to revolutionize healthcare in the U.S. by connecting every payer, provider, and care team member to address whole person care, we foster care collaboration for the entire healthcare ecosystem to change healthcare for the better. While these words sound aspirational for some, for Bamboo Health they truly capture what we are working toward amid this incredibly unprecedented era in healthcare.

An important part of delivering on this promise is connecting everyone, everywhere through differentiated network reach and interoperability. During HIMSS, Bamboo Health’s Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development Jitin Asnaani will present a session on “Harnessing the Power of Interoperability to Cultivate Whole Person Care Collaboration across Providers, Patients, and Payers” as part of the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase, which will highlight the real-life impact of enhanced interoperability among providers.

As an advocate for electronic exchange of healthcare information for government, non-profit, health IT, and interoperability systems, Asnaani has been a bridge creator and a collaborator to drive healthcare towards a more coordinated and interoperable future. To date, this work has collectively enabled more than 100,000 clinical facilities – including almost 100% of all hospitals, more than 90% of all ambulatory clinics, and thousands of post-acute and home health facilities nationwide – to share their patient’s data with providers and other caregivers electronically, enabling true transformation of care management and helping to spur the advent of the rapidly-growing digital health industry.

At the Bamboo Health booth, we will also highlight the progress we’re making against the behavioral health and substance use crisis through our Pings, OpenBeds, and NarxCare solutions. This includes our latest company initiatives such as our expanded partnership with Bicycle Health, the leading virtual care provider of evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). By leveraging our Pings and Spotlights solutions for real-time insights into emergency department (ED) and acute inpatient care utilization, Bicycle Health case managers and therapists can better track patients’ care journeys, reach out to re-engage patients that have had care events, increase their level of care or alter their care plan as needed, and analyze utilization measures.

In closing, we look forward to participating and sharing our insights with professionals throughout the global health ecosystem who share the common goal of reimagining health and wellness for everyone, everywhere at HIMSS. To learn more about Bamboo Health, our work to support real-time care collaboration, and the progress we’re making to improve whole person care, meet with our team at booth: #4115 or at the Interoperability Showcase: #8240-75, March 14 – 18, 2022 in Orlando, FL. We also invite you to attend Jitin Asnaani’s “Harnessing the Power of Interoperability to Cultivate Whole Person Care Collaboration across Providers, Patients, and Payers” session on Tuesday, March 15 at 2:45 PM as part of the Interoperability Showcase Theater.

Summary of “988 is Coming!” webinar focused on the new mental health crisis number and how states are preparing

Posted on by Grace Keeling

For Bamboo Health’s February Knowledge for Good webinar, we tackled a timely topic that will soon impact all Americans. On July 16, 2022, individuals will be able to call or text an easy-to-remember, three-digit number, 988, to be connected with trained mental health professionals at 180+ regional crisis centers. The goal of 988 is for it to be the behavioral health version of 911.  

While the new number will go into effect regardless of any other efforts, many states are using the opportunity to change how they respond to mental health crises to better serve and help their citizens. In the webinar, one of Bamboo Health’s state government market leaders, Alycia Sepe, BSN, RN, helped sort out best practices for 988 crisis implementation, where states stand in readiness, and how our OpenBed’s Crisis Management System is being utilized to help states with their rollout. 

Behavioral health has received more intense attention in recent years in our country, with mental health conditions contributing to grim and staggering numbers, including more than 104,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in the last year. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the mental health outlook while behavioral health treatment providers have been strapped for resources. At the same time, stigma around mental health has decreased, contributing to more people seeking support. 

In 2020, federal legislation passed to establish 988 as America’s Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline while the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to implement the transition with the deadline to implement being July 16, 2022. In the two years since, work began to ready the number itself (i.e., transitioning numbers that began with 988 to new numbers) as well as states passing legislation to help support funding and infrastructure for improved crisis response, particularly as demand is expected to grow, with the goal of meeting citizens’ mental health needs and diverting them from emergency departments and law enforcement to care aligned with their needs.  

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), core services and best practices for implementing a crisis response include: 

  • No wrong door access: No matter how the concern comes in, it should be properly rerouted. 
  • Regional Crisis Call Center: Staffed 24/7 by clinical professionals available via phone, text, or chat. 
  • Crisis Mobile Team Response: Trained teams who can respond timely to an individual’s location. 
  • Crisis Receiving and Stabilization Facilities: Short-term observation and stabilization in a home-like, non-hospital environment.  

A successful crisis management system should (SAMHSA): 

  • Standardize crisis care processes and quality 
  • Promote suicide prevention as a core component of healthcare services 
  • Focus on resolving mental health and substance use disorders 
  • Decrease psychiatric bed overuse and eliminate emergency department boarding 
  • Decrease drain on law enforcement 
  • Decrease fragmentation of behavioral healthcare 

But, as highlighted in a December 2021 article in STAT News, “Many states aren’t ready for a 988 crisis line. The deadline is looming.” The author says, “The 988 call system holds great promise for offering all people facing mental health or substance use emergencies the appropriate support, services, and responses to get care and treatment. But that can’t happen until states roll it out effectively. If some states aren’t prepared to roll out 988, or have weaker infrastructure or support for it, the country would end up with a system that perpetuates inequities in mental health access rather than reduces them.” 

Bamboo Health is partnering with several states as a technology partner to meet best practices for their 988 rollout and beyond through our OpenBeds Crisis Management System solution. It provides: 

  • Real-time Impact: Quickly identify and refer patients to the right inpatient or outpatient treatment facility directly from the cloud-based module. 
  • Mobile Dispatch with GPS-enabled Functionality: See the proximity and availability of mobile crisis units, dispatch them, and conveniently communicate a patient’s information directly from the module—expediting the referral process. 
  • Tracking Capability: Track mobile crisis services via GPS on one dashboard and behavioral health services on a second dashboard, providing flexibility for patient referrals. 
  • Bi-directional System to Support a Digital Referral Process and Information Sharing: Avoid frustrating and time-consuming manual processes, make digital referrals, and learn whether a patient is a “Show” or “No-show.” 
  • Data Dashboards with Real-time Outcomes: View clear dashboards with real-time data around crisis call dispatches and response times, referral to treatment and access outcomes, and general use of the system. 
  • Monitoring and Interfacing with a Bed Tracking Inventory System: Connect to providers and organizations in your state and close more treatment loops with bed capacity data from crisis stabilization units, group homes, inpatient SUD treatment programs, opioid treatment programs, and many more. 

Learn more by viewing the 30-minute entire webinar. 

Shaping the Future of Whole Person Care at ViVE: Leveraging Behavioral Health Care Coordination to Close the Gaps in Care

Posted on by Grace Keeling

At Bamboo Health, we believe that the future of the healthcare industry focuses on the importance of cultivating care coordination, everywhere. In pursuit of this vision, we work tirelessly to empower better healthcare for all communities nationwide, which is why we are so excited to participate in the inaugural ViVE event. Merging the leadership of CHIME and the digital marketplace of HLTH, ViVE brings together top thought leaders involved in shaping tech-enabled healthcare and addressing the key issues in digital health innovation. That includes our very own Chief Clinical Officer Nishi Rawat, M.D., MBA, who will be participating in the “Whole-Person Care 101: CH. 1 Behavioral Health” panel session.

Using her previous years of frontline medical care experience as a critical care physician and passion to improve care delivery, Dr. Rawat leads our behavioral health strategy, including OpenBeds and the Crisis Management System which enables mobile crisis response. As a clinician and advocate for investment in behavioral health and crisis services, she has seen firsthand the inefficient manual processes used to locate and refer patients to the appropriate level of care including for mental health and substance use needs. Dr. Rawat understands that clinicians need education and access to better tools to fill this void in order to help their patients secure treatment for their underlying behavioral health conditions and support whole person care.

At ViVE, Dr. Rawat will shed unique insight on the role that behavioral health care coordination and interoperability play in closing the gaps in care. One item driving change nationally is the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act establishing “988” as the three-digit code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which goes into effect on July 16, 2022. The switch will create an easy-to-remember number for behavioral health needs akin to 911. Dr. Rawat’s expertise covers the digital infrastructure elements required to facilitate this crisis management process to facilitate rapid referral and placement of behavioral health patients into treatment.

At the center of this change, both Dr. Rawat and Bamboo Health have and continue to work to reinvent and improve crisis management and behavioral health care coordination nationwide. Through the sharing of technology, data, and analytics across behavioral health, prescription drug monitoring, and acute and post-acute care events, we facilitate provider-to-provider communication and collaboration to introduce new levels of visibility for respective care teams – positively impacting the patient’s whole care experience, both physically and mentally.

To learn more about Bamboo Health, our work to support real-time care collaboration, and the progress we’re making against the behavioral health and substance use crisis, visit us at ViVE, March 6 – 9, 2022 in Miami Beach. We invite you to attend Dr. Rawat’s “Whole-Person Care 101: CH. 1 Behavioral Health” panel session on Monday, March 7 from 2:00 – 2:50 ET as part of Track 1 on Getting Personal: Custom-Tailored Care and meet with our team during the event at booth #326.

Want to learn more about the 988 initiative?

  • Find out how the state of New Hampshire is using Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds Crisis Management System to enable crisis call center professionals to do digital intake, complete validated assessments, and dispatch mobile crisis response teams with GPS-enabled technology, in our blog.
  • Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, February 22 from 2-2:30 p.m. ET. Bamboo Health’s Alycia Sepe, state government market leader, will overview the current crisis management landscape, and where states stand ahead of the switch that happens on July 16. Hear how we are working with states to support their response through our technology solutions. Reserve your spot!
  • We’ve prepared a comprehensive Public Health Crisis Management Playbook to answer your questions about “988” implementation. Download your copy today!

Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds Crisis Management Solution helping to support the New Hampshire Rapid Response System

Posted on by Grace Keeling

New Hampshire’s new mental health crisis system launched on January 1 and is already seeing heavy demand, according to The Granite State News Collaborative which published articles about the Rapid Response Access Point in several media outlets in the state, including Business NH Magazine.

Bamboo Health is proud to support the state’s rollout of the 988 initiative – an easy-to-remember, universal number for behavioral health support akin to 911 for physical emergencies – through a multi-year contract with Beacon Health Options. New Hampshire is using our OpenBeds Crisis Management System to enable crisis call center professionals to do digital intake, complete a validated assessment, and dispatch mobile crisis response teams with GPS-enabled technology, when appropriate.

According to The Granite State News Collaborative article, in the first month of operation the New Hampshire Rapid Response Access Point received 4,152 calls or texts for behavioral health support. In addition, there were 564 mobile crisis team responses dispatched within an hour to an individual’s location, facilitated by Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds Crisis Management solution.

Read the full story in Business NH Magazine and also read coverage of the state’s crisis response rollout in:

Want to learn more about the 988 initiative?

  • Watch our webinar hosted by Bamboo Health’s Alycia Sepe, state government market leader, who overviewed the current crisis management landscape, and where states stand ahead of the switch on July 16. Hear how we are working with states to support their response through our technology solutions. Watch the webinar now!
  • We’ve prepared a comprehensive Public Health Crisis Management Playbook to answer your questions about “988” implementation. Download your copy today!
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