CHESS Health Launches eIntervention to Get More Individuals into Treatment for SUD
Removes Barriers to Treatment with an Industry-Leading Referral Management System for Providers and Patients
Rochester, New York, February 5, 2019 — CHESS Health, the leading provider of addiction management technology, has launched a five-component eIntervention solution to facilitate and motivate getting more individuals with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) to treatment as soon as possible.
“Only 10 percent of those with SUD are in treatment; that’s got to change,” says Hans Morefield, chief executive officer of CHESS Health. “We launched eIntervention to create a more effective referral process for providers and to support the patient with a ‘digital handoff’ from the referral sender to the receiver.”
In the Emergency Department (ED), for example, patients identified as vulnerable to developing SUD, or who may have an active SUD, have traditionally been handed a treatment center pamphlet, a list of phone numbers to call, or are directed to the nearest Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Even in EDs where patients meet with peer specialists, they often leave without any formal plan and the treatment centers in the community are unaware and therefore unable to follow-up.
Similarly, primary care providers (PCPs) have struggled to make effective referrals for SUD. Their biggest obstacles: a lack of information on treatment options, and minimal experience and time to educate and motivate a patient to follow-through on a treatment recommendation.
eIntervention solves the issues faced by EDs, PCPs, and others, with a browser-based solution that quickly identifies appropriate treatment providers for a patient, based on service, geography, and payer coverage, and then, with the patient’s consent, alerts selected providers in the community of the patient’s need for treatment. eIntervention also includes an app to engage the patient with personalized videos to address any potential resistance to treatment and secure messaging with the provider to receive support and referral coordination. The app can also be offered to family members and includes content that supports them in understanding addiction and the treatment process.
With its closed-loop referral functionality, eIntervention tracks the intervention journey of each patient giving the sending provider hard data, for the first time, into the outcome of their intervention and referral. The insights from this data helps providers, payers, and communities, better understand referral patterns, capacity constraints, and the reasons patients do and don’t follow through on referrals.
“There are so many points during the many addiction treatment care transitions where the patient can slip away, only to show up in the ED again,” says Morefield. “We believe eIntervention can stop this unproductive cycle, reduce SUD utilization of EDs, and get more individuals in treatment faster through smarter referral management and effective patient engagement. ”
About CHESS Health
CHESS Health is the developer of the leading, evidence-based technology platform for the addiction management life cycle. The platform facilitates digital handoffs for getting more patients into treatment (eIntervention); improves outcomes through digital CBT (eTherapy) and reduces relapse and supports long term recovery (eRecovery). For providers, the CHESS platform grows patient volume through more successful referrals, improves treatment delivery, and measure better outcomes, including reduced relapse. Health plans and governments also benefit from more individuals in treatment and better outcomes; with the CHESS platform, they also gain analytic insights into provider performance. CHESS Health has received recognition from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP), the Journal of Substance Abuse and the Surgeon General. For more information, visit www.chess.health.
