Dr Roger Kathol on Value-Added Services in Behavioral Healthcare

Value-added services in mental health care improve the patient’s outcome while also being financially efficient, explained Roger Kathol, MD, president of Cartesian Solutions, Inc., and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota.

Transcript

What are considered value-added services and how can these be implemented in the care setting?

So value-added services are really mental health services to patients that, number one, improve health, and number two, do it in an economically responsible way. So it’s value for the spend of the care that’s given.

And there are a number of behavioral health services that clearly bring value to patients with various kinds of mental health and substance abuse disorder problems, and there are of course ones that don’t. So that access to behavioral health services does not necessarily mean that you’re going to get the kind of behavioral health treatment that is going to lead to a change or an improvement in the outcome of the mental health or substance abuse problem you have.

So the first thing is you need to make sure that you’re using approaches to care that are going to lead to improved health, and then as you do that you identify strategies for delivering it in the most efficient and effective means possible.