Care Evolution

Importance of digital behavioral health

Behavioral health is a term that encompasses a person’s habits, often manifesting as general wellbeing or mental health and substance use disorders. As the United States healthcare system continues to shift to focus on quality of care rather than quantity of care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have identified core measures of behavioral health that help establish value of care. Their 2022 core set of behavioral health measures lay out 20 areas that can be used to mark improvement in behavioral health, 7 for children and 13 for adults. These data can be collected through electronic health records, surveys, or administrative means, and serve as a solid base for the evaluation of quality care. However, the majority of behavioral health measures focus on when a patient is in the hospital or immediately following hospitalization, which represent the minority of cases in which behavioral health care is needed. There is a notable lack of access to behavioral health care and a shortage of mental health professionals, which illuminates the critical need for enabling measures of behavioral health using a digital health platform. This need was only heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. As described by the Director of the National Institute on Mental Health, in June of 2020, 31% of respondents to a CDC survey experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression, 13% started or increased substance use, 26% showed stress-related symptoms, and 11% reported having serious thoughts of suicide in the past 30 days—these numbers were double those expected before the pandemic.