Mental Healthcare Organization to Close Clinics, Shift to Telehealth

A Minnesota-based provider of mental health services is shutting down most of its physical locations and shifting all services to telehealth.

Southwestern Mental Health, which operates five clinics and a handful of community treatment programs under the Avera Health umbrella, announced the new strategy this week, saying the shift was driven by a number of factors, including patient preference and reimbursement.

“Generally speaking, before the pandemic if people needed to see a psychiatrist with us it was through telemedicine,” Luke Comeau, the organization’s executive director, told the Pipestone County Star. “So that was not new. And the reason for that had to do with insurance.”

Forced by the pandemic to reduce in-person treatment, many healthcare organizations shifted to virtual care. This was especially true in telemental health, which saw more virtual visits during the height of the COVID-19 emergency than any other type of care provider.

While telehealth use is easing back as providers re-open their physical sites and try to balance virtual and in-person services, mental and behavioral healthcare providers are staying online. That shift is seen in federal and state telehealth laws and payer policies as well, which are evolving to allow more access to and coverage of telemental health services.

They’re also seeing more competition. Large hospital and health systems are expanding their telehealth platforms to include mental and behavioral health services, and telehealth companies are marketing those platforms to businesses, school systems and other organizations or launching their own services online. The availability of those services not only affects patient engagement and retention, but also makes it hard to hold onto staff.

According to Comeau, a survey taken earlier this year found that more than 90 percent of patients saw telehealth as a positive experience, often because of the convenience of accessing care from home or any other location. With that in mind, the organization spent money to upgrade its Zoom platform to meet federal and state privacy and security standards.

The shift to virtual, he said, also appealed to staff.

“Most of our staff were having to come to the office and dealing with crises in our own region of lack of daycare, kids coming home or being quarantined from school,” he told the newspaper. “That whole debacle and just working with family life and so on. The resounding thing we were hearing from staff is that we need to be flexible and be able to work from home and provide services.”

Comeau said the organization is still working on how to help patients who don’t have access to or can’t afford telemedicine resources, including broadband connectivity. That may include partnering with local communities or nearby hospitals to give patients a site to access telemental health services.

“It is no secret that there are lower socioeconomic clients who may not have access to the resources needed and I think that’s the heart of the issue,” he told the newspaper. “That’s where talking with our stakeholders and counties and finding ways to meet the needs of our clients if they do not have the resources to be able to do this.”