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While the landmark health reform laws enacted in 2009 (HITECH Act) and 2010 (Affordable Care Act, or ACA) have begun transforming certain aspects of the US healthcare system, they have not had a meaningful impact on behavioral and mental health care delivery. Patients in need of these services already face an uphill battle in terms of social stigma and making a decision to seek out care, yet our system compounds such challenges through poor benefit design, uneven IT adoption, and lack of care coordination. An emerging fleet of technology solutions focused on behavioral health care has the potential to improve care, though they are not without their own set of challenges.
- Providers lack adequate incentives to adopt patient-facing digital mental health care tools. This is due both to omission of non-psychiatric mental health specialists in the Meaningful Use program as well as the slow adoption of value-based contracts.
- Vendors of new technology have not placed a premium on making their platforms interoperable with legacy software. New startups have focused most of their efforts on developing self-contained tools geared towards the employer market rather than emphasizing document exchange, shared care plans, or tools for the population health manager to manage mental health needs.
- Given the fragmented nature of the delivery system for mental health care, the market for mental health care IT is quite immature. While there are ample opportunities for one-off improvements (primary care, substance abuse facilities, Veterans Affairs, higher education, employee programs, etc) – only those health systems who can underwrite their own reforms will be the ones taking action.
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