NYC Health + Hospitals recent received Helmsley Charitable Trust grants $3.9 million to include mental health services ExpressCarea virtual urgent care platform for health systems.
health system roll out ExpressCare in the fall of 2020, when there was an urgent need to reduce in-person visits. Erfan Karim, executive director of ExpressCare, said in an interview that the telehealth platform employs a “convenient care model designed to keep patients away from the emergency room.” To date, the platform has received more than 80,000 visits.
With funding from Helmsley, NYC Health + Hospitals is now integrating mental health services to provide 24/7 services on ExpressCare, including treatment of mental illness and substance abuse.
“We recognize that a silent pandemic is taking place and that there is a huge need for behavioral health services,” Karim said. “We want to bring ExpressCare’s model to the behavioral health needs of patients, giving them easy and fair access to their opportunities.”
Through ExpressCare, patients have on-demand access to behavioral health professionals, including psychiatrists, social workers, addiction counselors and mental health nurses. For example, people with severe anxiety disorders can take advantage of the platform if they feel the need to speak to a mental health professional urgently. Alternatively, people who run out of medication and haven’t had an appointment with a psychiatrist for a few days can log on to ExpressCare to get a prescription that can fill the gap in adherence.
NYC Health + Hospitals is also partnering with New York City’s Department of Homeless Services to launch a new version of telebehavioral health services for the city’s homeless. The health system plans to roll out this release at 25 homeless shelters and 6 mobile street outreach clinics in the first year of Helmsely’s three-year grant.
The program will also test the effectiveness of four strategies to engage vulnerable patients in behavioral health care. The first strategy aims to educate the homeless about ExpressCare by ensuring that shelter system workers, who act as trusted messengers, spread awareness about the service. NYC Health + Hospitals will also work with these community liaisons to learn more about the day-to-day activities of homeless individuals and how to better tailor its telebehavioral health services to meet the needs of these patients.
For the second strategy it’s testing, NYC Health + Hospitals is seeking to improve access to telebehavioral health services by taking on the cost-sharing portion of this care. Health systems are also testing the effectiveness of interventions to help patients keep up with their clinical treatment regimens, such as delivering medicines directly to shelters where patients are staying. The last strategy the health system is testing is street-based behavioral care. Karim said it’s to help the city’s homeless people who don’t live in shelters because they’re often forgotten by the U.S. health care system.
Over the next three years, Karim and his team plan to have ExpressCare benefit 10,000 to 15,000 homeless people. They also hope to create a sustainable virtual emergency mental health care model so that other health systems can eventually use it to roll out similar programs in their communities.
Photo: Alisa Zahoruiko, Getty Images
