Telebehavioral Health: The New Mantra For 2022
Behavioral health will always be a topic for discussion anywhere, anytime. Lifestyle, social factors, environmental changes, work pressure, family pressure, etc, can affect the behavioral health of any individual.
With the advent of COVID-19, it only got exaggerated to high levels. People got not only stuck at different places, they got stuck up by obsessive, self-criticizing thoughts that made them mentally ill. Many providers developed services to meet the needs of these people.
Many platforms came online with behavioral health monitoring applications which made both the doctors’ and caretakers’ work easier.
Telehealth
Everything has started changing to digital means, even before the pandemic and this has made everything easy. Things had gone digital for easy and safe access by the users, be it of any kind.
This helped medical providers too. This is where telehealth comes into action.
Telehealth refers to the healthcare services provided through virtual means. This allows one to reach and communicate with their healthcare providers safely and quickly by using simple telecommunication techniques.
Such as telephonic chats, live video calls, health apps, remote patient monitoring, etc.
The other types of telehealth include mobile healthcare applications, audio-only visits, live video calls, transferring of recorder videos/audios, e-visits, case-based teleconferencing, remote patient monitoring, etc.
Telehealth helped save time and money for both the patients and the physicians.
Behavioral Health + Telehealth = Telebehavioral Health
The consequent habits which affect our general well-being, emotions, biology, and behavior generally refer to behavioral health.
It is often confused or interchangeably used with mental health. But it is a more wide-ranged term that integrates not just our mental wellness, but the paths or ways through which our mind travels in real life.
Monitoring behavioral health becomes a great challenge for both the physician and the caretaker of the patient. This comes in handy when behavioral health is collided with telehealth by the providers.
Telehealth uses many means to bridge the gap between doctors and their patients. This ensures immediate care delivery.
RELATED: AUTOMATE YOUR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PRACTICE OPERATIONS WITH 4 SMART TIPS
“Telebehavioral Health” The New Mantra For 2022
The U.S. federal government declared that COVID-19 was a nationwide public health emergency (PHE) on January 27, 2020, a declaration that has since been repeatedly renewed, most recently on October 18, 2021.
In reaction to the PHE, the federal government began to take several steps to make providing and receiving care through telehealth easier for healthcare providers, patients, payers, and third-party vendors.
According to a source, the 2022 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule is promoting the expansion of meaningful patient access to healthcare via telemedicine and other digital health technologies, both during the continued COVID-19 PHE as well as via a post-pandemic strategic plan.
This includes providing behavioral healthcare via telemedicine technologies, particularly for traditionally underserved communities; promoting growth in diabetes prevention programs (another important aspect of behavioral health); and increasing payments for vaccine administration.
Behavioral medicine has been acknowledged by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), as it changed well due to the COVID-19 PHE. The access to behavioral health services via telemedicine has remarkably increased to many people to whom the service delivery was big trouble in the past.
The Removal Of Obstacles
- Behavioral health/monitoring through telehealth will continue to break barriers that prevented early basic care deliveries to unreachable rural geographical areas by 2022.
- This offers more security, convenience, and privacy.
- The removal of geographical restrictions allows one to avail telehealth services at their home which increases comfortability and increases the chances of positive results.
- The patients can also have additional visits depending on their clinical needs.
- The people in rural areas were not able to reach specialized consultations and care before. But with the help of telehealth, this obstacle can be overcome by using telemedicine, remote patient monitoring (RPM), etc, in 2022.
- Providing behavioral health via telehealth has to face many challenges in 2022. So a well-planned system must be created. This need promotes the healthcare providers to find more solutions and innovate things that directly promote the growth of their platform and also the industry as a whole.
- Behavioral health via telehealth will help people who are less confident and unwilling to seek help one-on-one. Their details and whereabouts will be confidentially maintained, and only if they are comfortable with the service and the provider, they can continue working with them. There will be no compulsion.
Selection Of New Tele-Behavioral Health Services For Your Practice
- It is important to know the kind of tele-behavioral services you can provide as a service provider. Some of the telebehavioral health services are,
- Online group therapy
- Telepsychiatry for prescription monitoring and refills
- Psychiatric assessments
- Substance use disorder based treatment
- Anxiety and depression online counseling for individuals
- The behavioral services which cannot be done through telehealth must also be kept in consideration while selecting the kind of service. Services that may require compulsory in-patient monitoring of patients such as intensive treatment or exposure therapy cannot be done using telehealth services.
- You must also select the target community for which you are going to serve.
- Determining your budget to avail of technologies must be your next step in selection. This depends on your preference. Whether you want to use existing telehealth software or hire some providers to create a new behavioral health platform for your practice.
Conclusion
Won’t you agree with us when we say that the human mind is the trickiest and most complicated creation of all in the world? It’s impossible to disagree. In a pandemic-driven world, things relating to human behavior will only get more complicated in the future.
That too healthcare is the fast-growing sector among the others. People search for new findings and technologies to bring healthcare to their homes. And behavioral health will be the most attended one from now onwards. It will need more delicate and quality care.
So connecting behavioral health with telehealth services will make a hit this year. Get ready for this change by using the products provided by “Vozo”- your friendly healthcare service provider, who can change your way of practice in very few steps.
Visit our website or contact us to know and increase your practice productivity by using the products offered by us.
“Let’s make your 2022 advanced with telebehavioral health services”
With more than 4 years of experience in the dynamic healthcare technology landscape, Sid specializes in crafting compelling content on topics including EHR/EMR, patient portals, healthcare automation, remote patient monitoring, and health information exchange.
His expertise lies in translating cutting-edge innovations and intricate topics into engaging narratives that resonate with diverse audiences.
