Patients shouldn’t experience different standards of care based on their geography or socioeconomic status. To help close critical health care gaps in rural and medically underserved communities where access to specialists may be limited, OCHIN offers innovative solutions to help primary care providers connect more patients to the high-quality specialty and behavioral health care they deserve.
These navigators support both specialty mental health practices and clinics that provide integrated behavioral health service in primary care, including chronic case management.
eConsult services improve patients’ access to needed care, wherever they live.
AristaMD enables asynchronous electronic consultations with specialists (eConsults) to improve patient access to the timely treatment they need. This integrated eConsult solution allows easy collaboration between primary care and specialty providers to support high quality, coordinated patient care. It integrates seamlessly into referral workflows to quickly and cost effectively launch specialist eConsults using your own specialists or those provided by AristaMD.
RubiconMD is an eConsult service that integrates high-quality specialist expertise into primary care for more efficient, cost-effective care. By connecting primary care clinicians to same-day insights from top specialists, RubiconMD ensures all patients have access to the specialty care they need, no matter where they live.
OCHIN network data reflects local, regional, and national trends of limited access and delayed referrals to specialists, which are drivers of health disparities.
In a 2019 analysis, OCHIN found time to appointment was 44 days on average across patients served in the network, and referrals that took longer than 2 months to schedule were 40% less likely to be completed.
In 2020, average wait time for specialty referrals was 52 days, and in 2021, the average wait time was even longer at 56 days.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on children’s and youths’ mental health. More than half of Ohio’s youths with depression did not receive any treatment in the last year, and high school students with depression are more than twice as likely to drop out than their peers. Many Ohio families have limited access to the health care they need, especially mental health services, due to provider shortages and other barriers like lack of time, wait times, and long distances to the nearest provider.
Children in Ohio deserve access to high quality health care, including mental health care, no matter where they live.
OCHIN is partnering with the State of Ohio and local school districts to connect students to convenient and affordable mental health care through telehealth in schools. Our innovative and proven approach to community-based telehealth programs will help provide integrated mental health services to ensure children of all ages across Ohio have timely access to the care they need, when they need it, to improve health and well-being across the state.
OCHIN Connections is a monthly newsletter featuring the latest OCHIN news and perspectives supporting our mission to drive health equity.