Weekly Intel: The future is hybrid
WEEK OF 27 MAY 2024
It’s David. It’s a short week for most of us. The science is growing ... 4-day work weeks tend to be more productive!?
And thank you to those offering kudos and constructive input on our new newsletter format. We welcome all feedback.
The TLDR from Kirby AI: Behavioral healthcare’s future is hybrid, blending physical and digital solutions. With major telehealth cutbacks, personal human interaction remains crucial. New research links gut health to addiction recovery, suggesting growing holistic, and effective treatment. Our CEO discusses recovery capital in a new webinar. And Palm Beach County’s $150M opioid plan emphasizes social determinants of health, using our Recovery Capital Index to drive strategy and outcomes.
Today’s Intel is 984 words, a 4.5-minute read.?
Top Sheet: The future of behavioral healthcare is hybrid
By David Whitesock, CEO
How does the saying go? “All politics is local.” Well, all healthcare is local, coordinated, continuous, and delivered through physical and digital places.?
Both Optum and Walmart announced the shutting down of the telehealth services, with Walmart also closing 51 brick and mortar clinics. During the pandemic, we embraced Zoom, called our doctor via video to confirm COVID symptoms, bought Pelotons, and leaned into the “convenience” of digital solutions.?
Turns out, digital only is not what most people want. Digital is the secondary option, the less urgent, in between solution.?
The driver for more digital health tools is access. And, while we need more frictionless and varied access points, healthcare is still very personal and human. Technology, like artificial intelligence, will play a key role in process efficiencies and data understanding, but still feel most comfortable engaging with real people for our healthcare.?
The digital and telehealth trends with giant primary care are a telling indicator for behavioral health. Since most addiction and mental healthcare is already rooted in local, community-based brick and mortar, the opportunity lies with each of these operations to design and delivery an elegant experience that mixes the physical and digital and extends the service beyond expectations.??
Commonly Well technology advisor, Ruth Krystolpolski summarized things this way:?
“Patients are no longer looking for virtual, segmented care options. They want coordinated care models where physicians are addressing their care for the long term, rather than a one-off online that often lands them in a doctor’s office a week later. If physicians choose to utilize telehealth options, they must be used in a wholistic approach including in-person visits to ensure patients are receiving the support they need.”?
Why this maters: We believe that greater transparency through data will improve the credibility of services, provide accountability, and move the needle on improved quality of care.?
Team Brief: Team Brief: Understanding the brain, gut microbiome, and addiction
By Justin Smith, PhD, Chief Technology Officer
As a Neuroscientist, I always enjoy following research trends and ideas. In recent years, researchers have focused on how the microorganisms in our gut (the gut microbiota) affect brain health and central nervous system diseases. There's a growing understandingthat drug addiction is not just a brain condition but also involves external factors like the gut microbiota. This connection can influence a person’s vulnerability to developing addictive behaviors. Stress and social interactions, which are closely linked to gut microbiota, also play a significant role in addiction.??
Our bodies function as a unified system, with the brain and gut microbiota being integral parts of this system. This review examines how the microbiota-stress-immune axis affects drug addiction and social behaviors, integrating evidence that shows the bidirectional communication between stress, social behaviors, substance use disorders, and gut microbiota. It suggests that gut microbes might influence social stress, impacting drug addiction.?
Why this matters: A far bigger trend for treating addiction is through other drugs and pharmaceuticals. This emerging science around our gut microbiota suggests that the answer to both reducing the risk to addiction (and other risky behaviors) and improving recovery success lies within each of us.?
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Company Brief
The ASAM Criteria have been updated, and that's great news for a comprehensive approach to recovery. Last week, our CEO, David Whitesock, participated in The Change Companies webinar series: The ASAM Criteria Unplugged ... and other tales from the field. David had a deep discussion with Valerie Bagley and Scott Boyles about applying recovery capital and recovery capital measures throughout the full continuum of care. Watch the conversation and learn how the new 4th edition of the ASAM Criteria makes more room for recovery capital and social determinants of health.?
We continue to highlight our team’s insights through a new video series. The latest insightfrom our Head of Growth, Steve Millette, encourages us to participate in more collaborative efforts to scale human flourishing in our communities. Subscribe to our new YouTube Channel to hear more insights and analysis each week.?
Customer Brief: Palm Beach County approves opioid spending, recovery master plan
The Recovery Capital Index has been a piece of Palm Beach County’s strategy to reduce opioid overdoses and build a recovery-oriented system of care since 2019. That strategy evolved last week with the approval of a master plan for spending nearly $150 million in opioid settlement funds through 2042.?
Core to the approved plan was ensuring that 90% of the funds are used on improving social determinants of health. The RCI is instrumental to that strategy, providing recovery capital and outcomes data to inform program success and policy direction.
John Hulick, Senior Program Manager of PBC Community Services Department said the plan “proposes essential services to meet an individual’s needs [and] that funds be set aside for housing and peer support, all of which are designed to remove barriers and improve long-term recovery outcomes.”
It is a privilege for Commonly Well to be partnered with Palm Beach County through this strategy and go-forward plan.
The Data: Sense of Purpose, Beliefs, and Safety drive resilience for recovering people in Palm Beach County
The connection people have to themselves and their place in a community are the top factors of resilience or recovery in Palm Beach County. In the four years since we started measuring recovery capital in Palm Beach County, we have indexed top factors for resilience and top factors of risk.
More than 4,600 RCI surveys have been completed by 2,500 or more individuals served by CSD funded programs as of February 2024.?
Why this matters: The long-term and ongoing data provide key data for decision making at every level within the PBC recovery-oriented system of care. The strength, fidelity, and confidence in the data – which comes from participant self-report – guides treatment and recovery planning, program performance, and policy determination.
Ready to apply Precision Recovery to your operations?
To measure outcomes and build a practice of recovery intelligence you need effective communications and easy to read data reporting and analytics. Connect today for a discovery call.