New "Telepsychiatry" Pilot Brings Mental Health to Rural Kids
Model Offers Promise of More Accessible Care Nationwide
Norfolk, Virginia — June 1, 2006
A new telepsychiatry program piloted with Pennsylvania school children offers a promising solution to meeting the needs of mental health patients in rural and urban areas across the country, ValueOptions announced today.
"This program delivers an innovative, effective solution to a problem that school districts are facing nationwide, both in rural and urban communities," said Dr. Jerome Bartley, superintendent of the Central Greene School District, where the program began last October. "Before telepsychiatry, we had concerns regarding attendance and instructional time for our students in treatment. Often students left for several hours for their appointments and sometimes they would not come back to school at all. With this program there is very little disruption of instructional time and it has helped greatly with attendance."
"Behavioral issues such as attention-deficit disorder and depression can certainly affect a child's school work, and that is only compounded if the child has to miss school to visit the psychiatrist," said Karen Bennett, Director of Greene County Human Services. "We have found that students who regularly leave school to make psychiatrist appointments can miss up to 30 school days a year. Through telepsychiatry, we believe that those missed days can be reduced by up to 75 percent."
Without leaving school, students go to the school nurse's office where they then teleconference in private with participating child psychiatrists. The psychiatrist in turn teleconferences from their own office to manage the children's medications. Child psychiatrists are a scarce resource in urban areas, but even more so in rural counties. As a result, travel time between school and the psychiatrist saves the kids long trips that cut into classroom time and also benefits parents who do not need to leave work to drive their children to the appointment.
Data from the Central Greene School District indicates:
- The teleconferencing technology itself was extremely reliable.
- Interaction between the physician and patient was maintained.
- The program was not disruptive to school operations.
- Children missed less school due to the program.
Because of the program, children were able to keep their scheduled appointments 96 percent of the time, up from 75 percent before the program was implemented. As a result of this success, the program is now expanding services to the West Greene School District.
In Greene County, ValueOptions' Value Behavioral Health administers the HealthChoices behavioral health program for the Pennsylvania Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. As a part of the HealthChoices program, Value Behavioral Health operates the telepsychiatry service in collaboration with Greene County Human Services and Centerville Clinics, which provides the psychiatric counseling to the students.
In addition to expending the program to other school districts in the county, plans are underway to offer the service to adults in the near future. The program will utilize a primary health site in the county where the telepsychiatrist will act as a consultant to the Primary Care Provider (PCP). The telepsychiatrist will conduct follow-up medication management checks, reporting back to the PCP any problems or issues that may require face to face intervention, along with their recommendations for prescriptions.
"Telepsychiatry holds much promise for HealthChoices and the people of Pennsylvania," said Laverne Cichon, CEO of Value Behavioral Health. "Often, behavioral health problems go undiagnosed or untreated because of lack of access to care. In many ways, access is about convenience. Telepsychiatry helps make sound clinical care convenient for the people who need it. And, if you can get people the care they need in a convenient manner, you are improving quality of life across many other areas, be it school, work, or family."
