How Does Your Organization Stack Up?

By Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer, OPEN MINDS

Competition is all about having better market positioning and competitive advantage (whether in performance or cost) than other organizations that are serving the same customers. I like to tell executive teams, it’s not about being a “perfect match” for what customers want (whether payers or consumers)—it’s about being the best available choice.

When developing strategies for success, competitive analysis is always focused on how your organization stacks up. And, at The 2022 OPEN MINDS Technology & Analytics Institute, Michael R. Lardieri, LCSW, Senior Vice President, Strategy for Core Solutions, presented some great baseline data about competitiveness in his session, Are You Prepared For The Next 5 Years? I was struck by the current state of the behavioral health service delivery system in two key areas: technology facilitating a better consumer experience and infrastructure for participating in value-based care. Both are critical to future competitiveness.

On the consumer experience side, there were significant challenges to getting consumers on board with using telehealth and virtual care—even at this point almost three years post-pandemic. Sixty-five percent of organizations reported that their consumers have challenges with the right hardware and 53% reported consumer challenges in using virtual care systems. But the challenges went beyond consumers. Over a quarter of organizations said they didn’t have the funds to invest in virtual care systems and 33% said they had staff working in multiple systems when delivering virtual services.

Mr. Lardieri spoke to the current issues managing telehealth services. “The pandemic made everybody jump to telehealth and I think many organizations were pretty successful doing that,” he said. “However, many of us provided a telehealth platform that isn’t coordinated with our other technology. We’re logging into two systems. You have to schedule in the telehealth program and in your own schedule. There’s a whole bunch of duplication. So you really want to look for telehealth technology that’s embedded in your EHR platform.”

In terms of the online consumer experience, progress is slow at most behavioral health organizations. The most common web site function was electronic appointment scheduling (at 50% of organizations). Every other type of web functionality was less common.

In terms of building partnership relationships with payers, over 50% of organizations reported not having a system in place to manage value-based reimbursement, and almost as many (46.7%) reported the need for significant staff training to participate in those arrangements. (Provider organization executives also reported problems with their partner health plans, from lack of readiness to negotiate those arrangements to insufficient contract volume to make the VBR arrangements viable.)

On a related issue, interoperability remains a problem. Fifty percent and 62% of organizations, respectively, reported that they are able to obtain consumer consents electronically or share care plans electronically within their own organizations.

Improving customer interfaces, both for the consumer experience and the ability to manage “advanced” contracts with health plans, are critical competencies for competitive advantage. The good news is, if you want to look at it that way, is that it’s relatively easy to stand out from the competition. Basic improvements in on-line consumer functionality and improvements in population health management infrastructure will put most organizations ahead of half (at least) of their competition. That notion reminds me of the adage, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”