Highmark Health is collaborating with Spring Health to enhance behavioral health access for its members. They’re launching a mental well-being platform within Highmark’s member app, offering easy access to wellness activities, therapy, medication management, and support. This initiative aims to alleviate the struggle of navigating multiple apps for care. Highmark plans to introduce this platform to various member plans starting January 2024. With many members residing in underserved areas, this move is crucial. Highmark estimates a 40% increase in access, targeting children and teenagers as well. Spring Health’s personalized care plans have shown significant mental health improvements in users, reducing stigma and promoting accessibility.
Highmark Health is teaming up with Spring Health to enhance access to behavioral health services for a wide range of its members. Together, they will introduce a mental well-being platform that seamlessly integrates with the insurer’s existing member app. This platform offers convenient access to daily wellness activities, care navigation, and a spectrum of clinical services, including therapy, medication management, and continuous support, both in-person and virtually.
Highmark intends to roll out this platform to members in fully insured employer plans, Affordable Care Act coverage, and Medicare Advantage from January 2024 onwards, as stated by Anil Singh, M.D., Senior Vice President and Executive Medical Director of Curated and Population Health at Highmark, during a recent press briefing. The primary aim is to ensure that members can effortlessly connect to the platform without the hassle of navigating through multiple apps to access the care they require.
Singh emphasized the instrumental role of the partnership with Spring in creating a single entry point for members to access these critical services.
Highmark’s commitment to enhancing the My Highmark experience has been evident, with previous collaborations such as the one with Google Cloud and League announced at HLTH in 2022, which introduced a single sign-on experience for members to access various services and essential data.
The addition of behavioral health services was a logical step for Highmark, considering its sustained focus on this area, especially in regions where access remains a significant challenge. Highmark pointed out that over half of U.S. counties, and 80% of rural counties, lack access to even a single psychiatrist.
Highmark anticipates that this platform will increase access for its members, including children and teenagers, by 40%.
Despite increased awareness of behavioral and mental health needs in the aftermath of COVID-19, stigma remains a significant barrier. On average, patients wait seven to eleven years between the onset of symptoms and seeking treatment.
Spring Health takes a personalized approach, creating tailored care plans for each member based on an initial assessment. Members can also book appointments in real-time, filtering providers according to their specific needs, including specialty, condition, gender, ethnicity, and language.
A recent peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that Spring’s tools have helped 70% of users improve their mental health, with an average time to remission of 5.9 weeks.
Kelli Morrison, Vice President of Health Plans and Channel Partnerships at Spring Health emphasized during the briefing that one of the partnership’s goals is to debunk the notion that improving access to care in rural areas will lead to increased costs. She described the partnership as setting a new standard in behavioral health and how access quality and outcomes are measured between payers and providers.