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BUFFALO, NY – HealthNow of New York has partnered with Health Integrated to provide a depression care coaching program for HealthNow members.
Health Integrated’s Synergy Depression Care Coaching, which HealthNow rolled out last month, approaches chronic illness from a behavioral perspective and combines personal care coaching, information technology and behavior modification skills for members and providers.
This tack highlights a shift for disease management. Sheila Gould, who is corporate director of healthcare quality initiatives for HealthNow New York, said disease management fell out of favor when vendors began pushing a cookie-cutter approach. HealthNow recently redesigned its internal disease management program to make it more member-centric and more effective in changing member behavior.
“Our overall goal is to improve the self-management of our members with their chronic condition and improve the care of members who are simply depressed,” said Gould. “The key for me in partnering with Health Integrated was its behavioral and medical management approach.”
Health Integrated’s IT capability and the use of its clinically integrated approach to behavioral health management and behavioral change techniques are key differentiators, said Sam Toney, MD, vice chairman and chief medical officer.
Health Integrated can deliver mass customization, which is key to the delivery of a patient-centric, outcomes-driven health improvement program, said Oleh Procinsky, vice president of IT.
“The IT component allows our internal care coaches to apply consistent messages, to use IT as a tool to identify in a population those high-risk members that would be appropriate for care, reach out to them and manage their case,” said Edwin Dasso, MD, vice president of clinical strategy and informatics at Health Integrated.
Cynthia Burghard, research director at Gartner, said current challenges in the industry include finding the right balance of technology and personalized touch and finding the appropriate time to apply IT.
“I’ve long been a proponent of balancing technology and touch,” she said. “As we get a better understanding of disease processes and interventions, finding that balance is going to make sense.”
