Consumer-Therapist-Connector: Increasing Access to Quality Behavioral Healthcare

摘要 美国正在经历一场严重的心理健康危机。根据《纽约时报》最近的报道， 约克时报和华盛顿邮报，行为健康的需求和获得之间的差距 服务正在迅速增加。迫切需要解决准入和质量两个方面的问题 行为医疗的问题。在新冠肺炎和其他压力因素的影响下，76%的受访者 员工报告至少有一个显著的行为健康症状，27%的人认为 他们的雇主没有做足够的工作来帮助他们的家人与他们的焦虑，抑郁，和其他 行为健康问题。另一份报告指出，成年人在等待名单上等待3个多月， 在马萨诸塞州接受门诊治疗根本没有足够的治疗师来满足 不断增长的需求和等待名单很长，而且越来越多。在质量方面，超过60% 的患者没有从他们接受的治疗中获得有意义的益处。我们已经创建 一个系统，显着改善了随机临床试验的质量问题：这 转介过程的主要转介渠道的网络成果大约翻了一番， 克利夫兰诊所，与病例分配的对照组相比， 基于治疗师自我感知的优势。在本申请中，我们旨在解决 通过开发消费者-治疗师-连接器来解决访问问题。这一创新的在线工具将 通过远距离快速将患者与匹配良好的治疗师联系起来进行传统治疗 搜索，或远程医疗由国家或国家搜索。我们的解决方案与 其他在线寻找治疗师系统的另一个优点是，患者可以很容易地被添加到所有治疗师的等待名单中。 经验上匹配良好的供应商，这增加了他们迅速与 一个很合适的心理医生它将减轻病人在打电话时遇到的日益严重的痛苦 许多供应商只知道他们的做法是满的。与此同时， 列表将大大增加使用我们成熟的匹配技术的机会， 同时提高质量，鼓励消费者和供应商提供和接受 只有当匹配可能对患者有很大好处时才能预约。

ABSTRACT The United States is experiencing a major mental health crisis. Per recent reports in the New York Times and The Washington Post, the gap between need and access to behavioral health services is rapidly increasing. There is an urgent need to solve both the access and quality problems with behavioral healthcare. With COVID and other stressors, 76% of surveyed employees are reporting at least one significant behavioral health symptom and 27% believe their employer is not doing enough to assist their family with their anxiety, depression, and other behavioral health issues. Another report indicated that adults are on wait lists for 3+ months to receive outpatient therapy in Massachusetts. There simply are not enough therapists to meet the growing demand and waiting lists are long and growing. On the quality side, more than 60% of patients find no meaningful benefit from the treatment they receive. We have already created a system that dramatically improved the quality problem in a randomized clinical trial: this referral process roughly doubled network outcomes for the primary referral channel for the Cleveland Clinic, improving outcomes compared to a control group where cases were assigned based on therapists self-perceived strengths. In the current application we aim to solve the access problem by developing Consumer-Therapist-Connector. This innovative online tool will expeditiously connect patients with well-matched therapists for traditional therapy by distance search, or telemedicine by state or national searches. What distinguishes our solution from other online find-a-therapist systems is that the patient can be easily added to the waitlist of all empirically well-matched providers, which increases the likelihood they will connect quickly with a good-fitting therapist. It will alleviate the growing anguish patients encounter when calling numerous providers only to learn that their practices are full. At the same time, these waiting lists will dramatically increase the opportunity to use our proven matching technology to simultaneously improve quality, encouraging consumers and providers to offer and accept appointments only when a match is likely to greatly benefit the patient.