Our approach embeds mental health early and often in a collaborative contruct, starting from the new patient intake. Here’s what you and your patients can expect:
No more clunky referral process- simply share your custom QR code with patients for a real-time registration in less than 12 minutes! This is where nearly 40% of patients fail to convert for mental health care.
Nurocoach confirms patient coverage and creates a patient profile. A mental health professional then conducts a history and clinical interview, typically 1-2 hours via telephone and/or telehealth appointment. This session delves into medical, pain, family, and psychological history, incorporating validated tests for depression, anxiety, opioid risk, sleep, catastrophization and optimism/pessimism.
Based on assessments and interview, Nurocoach delivers a Nurocare™ personalized plan that includes psychiatric coordination (SSRI/SNRIs, sleep support, esketamine, etc.) as well as behavioral interventions (CBT, ACT, motivational interviewing, mindfulness, etc.) that are aligned with your treatment plan, to reduce risk and optimize outcomes.
As behavioral experts, Nurocoach is uniquely equipped to manage your patients who likely consume the most resources in your practice through our Chronic Care Management (CCM) services.
We know that many patients who would benefit the most from behavioral support, are likely to opt-out. How can we work together to improve patient satisfaction, reduce turnover, and optimize outcomes? Click HERE to learn more!
Nurocoach is committed to helping triage your patients for whom behavioral intervention will most likely reduce risk and improve outcomes. To make this easy, we’ve developed a modified signal-light framework to coordinate care and resources.
Click on each of the signal lights for an overview of that score- and what it could mean for your practice and your patients.
Patients whose behavioral health will likely present significant risk– or at least drain on resources– for your practice if not addressed. Thankfully, these are the smallest proportion of patients, typically <5% in most practices.
They typically will present with more than one of the following: past/present suicidal ideation, high risk for opioid misuse, high catastrophization, low optimism, severe/untreated depression/anxiety, significant trauma, or addiction history.
These are patients for whom we believe a detailed behavioral health partnership is critical for patient safety.
Of course, most patients are going to fall in the middle. But we felt this needed more detail to be actionable for us as a collaborative care team.
We define as Yellow, patients with moderate scores across the board, or a high indicator on one scale without other significant concerns.
Targeted interventions are recommended, and increased access to mental health is highly likely to improve the patient experience within your practice. These patients will likely benefit from Nurocoach’s integrated approach and financial access to care, given the lack of viable options for mental health care in most communities.
However, additional care may not be required for them to achieve positive outcomes. They will benefit greatly from collaborative care and interventions such as RTM, pain support groups, individual counseling, and a pain-inclusive approach to psychiatric care they may already be receiving elsewhere.
By breaking up this middle into yellow and orange, we expect this group to represent 25-35% of your patients.
These are the top half of severity; sadly these patients are likely passing right through your current screening solutions, but they are stalled in improvement and may be consuming a disproportionate share of office/staff resources.
These are patients with multiple indicators for concern, with some degree of severity in more than one category.
This group is considered the "sweet spot" for significant impact through ongoing therapy, medication, or both.
A PHQ-9 score of 20+ or a PHQ-9 of 15+, combined with a high catastrophization score (PCS 30+) automatically categorizes a patient as "orange" because of the immense opportunity to impact physical pain outcomes by addressing mental health barriers to improvement. This group is most likely to get approved for neuromodulation – but they are also most likely candidates for eventual explant and high patient turnover.
We expect this group to represent 25-35% of your patient population.
Patients for whom very minimal to no interventions are necessarily required at this time. They account for 20-25% of most pain practice’s patients.
We believe that all patients would benefit from behavioral support, but these are patients with low depression, anxiety, and catastrophization scores, no serious trauma, or may already be effectively managing their mental health.
A preliminary attestation for neuromodulation trial can be issued quickly so your staff doesn’t have to scramble for it later.
Together, this approach will help us coordinate resources to help you identify patients early, who may present challenges later. Please contact us to learn more about how these Collaborative Care models further support the financial drivers of your practice.
Ultimately, Nurocoach believes that “good medicine IS good business.” The Nurocare model will: