Results are in from the Behavioral Health Communication Survey
Posted on November 20, 2014
Results from the survey to PCPs on communication with BH providers who are treating your patients
HNE is committed to supplying our providers with the information they need to deliver high quality care to our members. As part of that commitment, we asked you to participate in a survey to assess your experience with communications from behavioral health providers who are treating your patients. The results from the survey are as follows:
Do you receive reports? Are they timely? Are they helpful?
| Almost always (>80%) | 10% | 18% | 18% |
| Most of the time (60-80%) | 0% | 4% | 35% |
| Half of the time (50%) | 12% | 12% | 0% |
| Some of the time (20-40%) | 18% | 18% | 17% |
| Few times (<20%) | 30% | 18% | 6% |
| Never | 30% | 30% | 24% |
This information will help us develop methods to improve the continuity and coordination of treatment of our members. Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey and returning it to HNE.
As a psychiatrist, I appreciate seeing this data. I trained at Walter Reed AMC roughly around 1990, and we were trained to communicate frequently to therapists, primary care physicians. But in the military there was time allowed for this. I started my practices, first in Maryland, reaching out to PCPs. More so in the Pioneer Valley, PCPs only make themselves available when they return calls at the end of the day (5-6) when I am commuting. It used to be that if you called the back line, you could speak to the doctor, who would step out to speak to a specialist. This is no longer the case and unless a patient signs the necessary release to contact the primary care (patients often don’t tell me that the PCP sent them), I can’t call them by law, unless there is a dire emergency. Furthermore, PCPs in general are so rushed that one cannot have a proper conversation to make my data useful to them. As I work solo, and the psychiatrists we do have in this area often do, I do my own admin and typing up reports for free (psych reports are long) that really don’t explain things as well as a live conversation might do. Perhaps when telemedicine becomes commonplace, we can use this to connect. Or PCPs could designate just how much they want in a report that can be faxed. Again, we need a signed release from the patient who often can’t remember their PCPs name, number, etc. Not to complain, just trying to suggest remedies. Deirdre Curran, MD, Board Certified Psychiatrist, Northampton, Baycare and Baystate Associated/ HNE.
Hi Dr. Curran, thank you for your comments. I have forwarded your feedback to Robert Azeez, our Medicaid Behavioral Health Manager. He will be responding to you.