It might not come as a total surprise that a greater number of cancer patients (one in four) suffer from depression compared with the rest of the adult population. But that mindset can lead them to develop unhealthy lifestyles like smoking and drinking or substance abuse that could thwart treatment outcomes. A behavioral health IT firm has developed a screening service to assess whether cancer patients have depression or suffer from other underlying mental health conditions.
The Langhorne, Pennsylvania-based Polaris Health Directions‘ approach jibes with the shift in healthcare to outcome-based reimbursements. This week it inked an agreement with Minneapolis-based Empathic Clinical Suite, a provider of a cloud-based practice management system for behavioral health professionals. It can read and understand patient and clinical notes therapists enter into the system and simultaneously searches a diagnostic and statistical manual for diagnostic suggestions for clinicians to consider in developing their treatment plans. When the clinicians make their diagnostic assessment, Empathic automatically adds that information to the patient’s EMR and prepares the invoice to be submitted to the payer. As part of the deal, Empathic users get access to Polaris behavioral assessment tool, according to an emailed statement from Empathic.
The tool assesses psychosocial distress, common problems faced by cancer patients; assessment includes measures for depression, anxiety and other mental health symptoms. Additionally, it evaluates risky alcohol and drug use, smoking and cancer-related physical symptoms or side effects that can integrate behavioral health information with electronic medical record so providers take a more active stance in patients’ mental healthcare, according to the company’s website.
The company was started in 1997 with a focus on behavioral health, particularly with an eye toward substance abuse treatment centers. But in recent years it has expanded its scope to include medical applications. In addition to oncology, Polaris has also developed screening programs for patients with cardiovascular conditions and an automatic referral service that can be used by primary care physicians. In an interview with MedCity News, Grant Grissom pointed out that another component of the company is providing a way for behavioral health information to be integrated into electronic medical records — data that has traditionally been segregated from medical records.
“The basic idea is if you can marry behavioral health information with electronic medical records you are in a far better position to determine the need for behavioral health intervention,” Grissom said.
Another initiative the company is working on involves emergency room physicians putting patients who are smokers through a computer-based assessment that measures tobacco use, history of quitting attempts and interest in changing. The assessment tool also produces individualized feedback reports; a brief motivational video and the option to receive an automated, faxed referral indicating services near where patients live.
Grissom believes a more proactive stance will be taken more seriously by patients than simply passively handing them a piece of paper listing smoking cessation contact details and hoping for the best. And data collected from the Cooper University Hospital that has been taking part in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the program seems to confirm that, with an estimated 500 percent increase in patients entering tobacco cessation programs.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Polaris is also in the process of a study for a behavioral health screening service for college and university students at University of Nebraska, University of Massachusetts and Jackson State University. Grissom said when students are in high school they may be seeing a psychiatrist and on medication for, say, bipolar disorder. But once they are in university, there’s nobody to look out for them to make sure they are taking their medications.
“Increasingly, colleges are dealing with more serious mental illness than ever before. We’re working with counseling centers on the kinds of difficulties that students come to college counselors with,” Grissom said.
