Payer Helps Employers Recognize, Address Workforce Mental Health

Independent Health has partnered with a mental health awareness, patient advocacy organization to help teach employers how to identify workforce mental health conditions and directly affected individuals to treatment, the payer announced.

Experts predicted that the need for mental healthcare services would escalate as the coronavirus pandemic continued. By late May 2020, nearly 40 percent of adults that the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed said that they had experienced negative mental health repercussions from the pandemic.

These mental health conditions will not evaporate as soon as employees return to the workplace. Thus, it is critical that employers be able to recognize the symptoms and have resources on hand for their workforces.

“Those with mental illness may suffer alone while feeling unsupported, misunderstood or concerned of being labeled and stigmatized,” said George Burnett, MD, medical director of behavioral health at Independent Health. “The good news is mental illness is treatable and employers want to demonstrate a culture that is caring, knowledgeable and supportive.”

Independent Health and its partner, Horizon Health Services, plan to tackle this issue by connecting employers with resources to identify mental health conditions and also to guide them through what can be a highly sensitive conversation with their employees about their personal mental health and wellbeing.

The partnership will achieve this through a training program—the Mental Health Toolkit—that combines online and face-to-face elements. The training program covers five steps.

First, employers learn about the range of conditions they might observe in their workforce. They discover what their role is in addressing these conditions and helping employees get support.

“Employers have an essential role in supporting their teams with education and creating an open dialogue with readily available resources and treatment options,” explained Anne Constantino, president and chief executive officer of Horizon Health Services.

Then, looking more closely at individual scenarios, they learn to recognize the symptoms of mental health conditions and how to converse with affected employees.

Third, employers delve more deeply into depression and anxiety, substance abuse care, and suicide prevention strategies.

“Talking about stress management, self-care and mental health in the workplace can reduce the stigma associated with mental illness,” Constantino added. “Education is critical as we seek to improve mental health in our community.”

Fourth, employers learn about how other health factors affect mental healthcare and how eating habits and activity can impact mental health.

Finally, the program supports employers in developing compassionate and effective responses.

Independent Health has already used this program with its own workforce, putting over 160 managers and around 300 associates through these steps. Since then, it has expanded program access to all of the payer’s self-funded employers and employer groups that partake in Independent Health’s wellness programming.

Other payers have been taking on the coronavirus pandemic’s mental health fallout in different ways.

Tufts Health Plan, for example, zeroed in on substance abuse care.

The payer developed a partnership with Recovery Centers of America in order to expand access to care for members struggling with substance abuse in the New England region. The partnership added two conveniently-located recovery facilities to Tufts Health Plan’s substance abuse care resources.

WellCare of New Jersey—a Centene subsidiary—invested strategically to boost mental and behavioral healthcare services.

The payer funded a trauma therapy program that trained providers on how to best support frontline workers experiencing mental health conditions as a result of their work during the pandemic. Another subset of WellCare’s investments went toward public training around mental healthcare first aid.

The payer also funded “warmlines”—phone lines set up to support those experiencing the early stages of mental health crises or who are at risk for a mental health crisis. And the last portion of the investments went toward the National Domestic Violence Hotline.