Telehealth Supported Care for Community Mental Health Centers

Aspiring to enhance the future of telemedicine, a study uses information from community mental health centers (CMHCs) to discover the various benefits and limitations that accompanied virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic within these facilities.

The study contained 16,030 patients who came from CMHCs in New Hampshire.

In a retrospective observational study of New Hampshire CMHC information from December 2019 to June 2020, the researchers sought to analyzing the characteristics and attitudes expressed by these CMHC patients and the relationships they built with telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the small portion of visits that took place virtually was generally through videoconference.

However, as the pandemic worsened, the government began to remove barriers limiting telehealth access. The adjustment was intense for patients with mental health conditions, but overall, care continuity persisted.

This study found that treatment interruptions increased by only 4.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Patients who were the most likely to experience treatment interruptions were males under 18 years old who had less severe diagnoses, often relating to anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder.

Researchers also found that female patients between 18 and 34 with less severe diagnoses, such as anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and major depressive disorder, were most likely to use telehealth.

From their findings, researchers concluded that telehealth was highly resourceful for CMHC patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it will continue to open possibilities for future methods of care.

They also concluded that those most likely to be retained in treatment were older with more severe mental health disorders. However, this was also the population least likely to use telehealth.

Following their discussion, researchers acknowledged several limitations, including how coding and billing modifiers establishing differences between televideo and telephone services were unavailable in emergency situations. Additionally, the researchers didin’t have access to race or ethnicity data, nor data about service modality. Lastly, all data collected came from the pandemic period, which likely differs from the information of an ordinary time.

Telehealth aiding mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic was not uncommon. Due to the resourcefulness of telehealth, access to it expanded through the implementation of new laws on various occasions.

For example, Louisiana enacted a bill known as HB 449 in June 2020. This new law intended to expand access to telemental health services simply due to the needs of patients and the expansion of behavioral health services.