The Health Pulse

Behavioral care expert and psychologist Josh Morgan joins Greg to talk about the role of telemedicine in whole person care. Josh shares his journey from practitioner to data psychologist as he discovered the importance of understanding and removing systemic barriers to mental health. Access to care is a challenge, especially in mental health where everything from social stigma to inadequate health insurance coverage to lack of transportation can prevent patients from getting the help they need. Can telehealth help remove some of these barriers? Josh explains that it can for a lot of reasons. Virtual care is more discreet. It can also allow access from anywhere where the technology is available. Josh also shares the importance of looking at social determinants and how they impact behavioral health policy. We have an opportunity to expand data to get a more complete picture of the needs of patients, the programs that are most helpful and the effectiveness of the system in delivering care to those who need it most. But, what does quality mental healthcare look like? It’s about much more than reducing hospitalizations. How do we measure and incentivize extremely important but subjective outcomes like hope? Josh suggests that natural language processing and text analytics give us the tools to begin measuring the subjective more effectively in health care. And, if we can measure it, we can improve it. Now, that’s something to be hopeful about.  

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