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This article is sponsored by Mental Health Technologies (MHT), a cloud-based platform that enables health care providers to screen and measure mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Mental Health Technologies (MHT) brings much-needed technological innovation to a space in desperate need of it.
Via our online, HIPAA-compliant assessment tool, medical practices are able to send, evaluate, and bill DSM-IV and DSM-V tests remotely or in person. Physicians use that information to determine the type of treatment and overall level of care that best suits their patients’ needs and continuously monitor that care with a range of analytics on patient progress and clinician performance.
MHT founder and chief executive officer Ernie Wallerstein says the MHT platform’s objective is to improve patients’ lives through a medically-supervised journey to wellness.
“According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five adults in the United States has a mental illness in any given year,” said Mr. Wallerstein. “Clearly, there is a need for technological innovation, both from a customer experience perspective, as well as from a clinical and analytical perspective.”
“Mental health applications, which are focused on conditions and disorders like depression, suicidality, and addiction, enable people to access professional support outside their therapist’s regular office hours,” he added.
How does MHT work?
The MHT ecosystem can be summarized in five steps:
- Assessments sent to the patient
a. Sent one to two days prior to the appointment - Test results captured
a. Uploaded into physician EMR and MHT platform - Treatment plans and automated referrals
a. If a patient has a high test score, they will be asked for consent to be contacted directly by a specialist - Submittal to insurance for payment
- Follow-up
The MHT assessment screens can be sent to the patient electronically, via email or text message, or filled out at the doctor’s office prior to their appointment. Our platform also sends reminders to patients before their appointment if any of the tests provided to them have not been fully completed.
MHT’s tool is able to screen for a variety of mental health conditions, including but not limited to:
- substance abuse
- depression
- anxiety
- PTSD
- suicidal ideation
Suppose the patient answers any questions on our tests that would trigger an alarm for their safety. In that case, an alert will be immediately sent out to the appropriate resources as determined by the health care provider.
Upon receipt of test answers, results are automatically uploaded into to the physician’s EMR system. Physicians then read the test data and correspond them to the appropriate treatment, including automated referrals.
A key differentiator between MHT and other tech-enabled mental health companies: Insurance is can be billed on behalf of the physician, ensuring a seamless payment and a profitable revenue source for the medical office.
Subsequent testing by referring medical professionals will provide the initial physician with test results, allowing a well-rounded knowledge of patients’ health for their entire health care team.
Meet our founder and CEO
Ernie Wallerstein Jr. is the founder and chief Executive officer of Mental Health Technologies.
As a dedicated and lifelong employee of cloud computing and software programs, Ernie understands the untapped potential that stands to benefit the health care field.
“When it comes to mental health care, we noticed a significant void in the services provided to screen patients and collect objective data,” he said. “With the efficient technology, health care professionals would be able to consistently provide mental health care services to patients across the country.”
A major pain point for health care providers trying to tackle the burgeoning mental health and substance abuse crisis? Efficiency.
“The demand for mental health and drug abuse screening is immense, but there aren’t enough people to deal with it,” noted Mr. Wallerstein. MHT fills a critical void, with the capabilities to support a wide range of providers and clinicians.
“We aim to provide efficient tools not only to the mental health industry to treat patients but also for health care professionals who aren’t necessarily experts in mental health to screen patients. This helps health care professionals to understand if the patient needs further assessment, has to be referred to a mental health care/substance abuse professional, or if they need to consider that mental health issues are comorbid with the primary symptom.”
To add perspective to our platform, consider this scenario. When someone has back surgery and is put on a physical therapy regimen, the recovery period for a depressed patient is longer than for someone without it. But imagine if that person is undiagnosed–and untreated–for their mental health issue. It becomes vital to understand if the patient is already suffering from another underlying condition while the doctor treats the primary issues.
“The problem is enormous, but the current health care environment is not enough to address it. Even as the economy bounces back from COVID-19, mental health remains one of the biggest health care issues in the United States. There are so many patients out there who need help but have no access to it,” said Mr. Wallerstein.
“That is one of the reasons we founded MHT in 2018 to equip health care service providers with efficient tools to combat mental health issues.”
Looking ahead: What does the future hold?
MHT has several technological patents pending, submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These patents are focused on the efficiency in the delivery of the tests and data analysis to deliver more insights efficacy of treatment based on preexisting comorbid mental health disorders.
“We have many innovations planned for our platform, with a near-term focus on ADD/ADHD testing, telemedicine, and advanced AI integration,” MHT’s founder and CEO said. “For ADD/ADHD testing, traditionally forms are mailed to parents and teachers. This makes for an inefficient and manual process. We have made this whole process electronic; patients, their guardians, and their teachers can electronically fill in ADD and ADHD assessments, and the data will be available to the health care provider immediately.”
Mental Health Technologies is also planning to partner with tele-video companies specializing in telepsychology to enhance the level of care provided remotely. Over the medium to long term, one of our goals is to expand our predictive analytical capabilities.
“Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning engines into our platform to take our data and cross-reference it with the health care information for the patient,” Mr. Wallerstein said.
Why incorporate AI and ML? This will open up a massive new door to the mental health care space, allowing providers to benchmark and access other considerations related to the patient’s mental condition, substance abuse issues, and comorbidity with other conditions.
Become a member of the family
At MHT, our employees have over 100 years of combined experience. Serving physicians nationwide, our exceptional team is here to help.
Talk to one of our customer service representatives today to learn more about the MHT platform and how you can receive a 30-day free trial.
We look forward to speaking with you.
Resources:
Mental Health Technologies: Data-Driven Mental Healthcare Services
Mental Health Technologies: A Technology-led Revolution in Behavioral Health Space
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today we have a special sponsored episode. I’m joined by Ernie Wallerstein. He’s the CEO of Mental Health Technologies, or MHT. MHT is a cloud-based platform that enables health care clinicians to identify patients that may be suffering from undiagnosed or inadequately treated mental health and substance abuse disorders. Find out more at mhtech.com. That’s mhtech.com.
As a primary care physician, I routinely see how behavioral health conditions like anxiety and depression affect more and more patients’ lives. This is especially true as we emerge from the pandemic. The United States Preventive Services Task Force has recently recommended screening all adults for anxiety, but given our time constraints and the dozens of other screening tests and questions that we have to squeeze into a 15-minute office visit, I’m looking forward to hearing about anything that could help address our behavioral health crisis. Ernie, welcome to the show.
Ernie Wallerstein: Kevin, thanks a lot for having me, and I’m excited for our conversation.
Kevin Pho: So the first question is just to briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.
Ernie Wallerstein: I appreciate that. So I’m definitely coming at this from a technology standpoint. I’ve been in software and cloud computing my whole career, 30-plus years, and in my job before starting MHT, founding MHT with my co-founder Bill Leonard, I was running a cloud computing company here in North America and saw an opportunity for technology to address a major issue. Technology is not going to accurately diagnose or cure an individual, but it can provide some tools with which health care professionals can do a better job of tackling this increasingly large chasm that is the challenge of mental health and substance abuse in the U.S. and in the entire world.
That led me to think about how to do something maybe more important in my life, and also to take advantage of some of my experiences and address something that touches all of us. Like many of your listeners here, my family’s been touched by behavioral health issues. The youngest of six, I have a son with ADHD. I have a mother with severe dementia. As you move on in your career, you want to move a little bit higher in that Maslow hierarchy. You start doing a little self-actualization and helping out people. So that’s what got us to start MHT, and I’m excited to share more about it with you on this podcast.
Kevin Pho: So tell us about the journey of MHT. How has it grown?
Ernie Wallerstein: MHT started out as an idea. I met with a psychiatrist who had this great idea, but he was looking at it very clinically and didn’t really understand or know how to get the technology to help. In meeting with him, I was immediately drawn to the opportunity for technology like MHT to help behavioral health professionals, as well as family practice doctors, to not only identify behavioral health issues but also stratify the level of need.
As we’ve matured over time, we’ve learned that it’s not just about who needs help, but what level of help. There’s only X amount of finite resources at every level. I call them off-ramps, and you want the last off-ramp to be a visit to the ER. So how do we get people help before they get to that level? So the ER, psychiatrists, psychologists, their doctor; are there self-help tools, are there things they could be doing themselves? And so we help stratify it.
From a journey standpoint, Kevin, we started focusing on behavioral health because large behavioral health practices were just seeing so many patients that the medical director really didn’t know what was happening with the patient population anymore. You’re running a large practice, and everything became anecdotal. Getting the notes out of an EMR or EHR is really hard because everybody has their own writing style, so it was hard for them to have statistics or data that let them know: Is their patient population getting better? Are their providers getting better? How do you put best practices in place? If this psychologist is great with depression and that nurse practitioner is really good with anxiety, how do you take the best of both and share that across your entire provider population to provide a better level of health care?
That’s where we started, and then we’ve expanded over the just under four years we’ve been doing this, to realize that primary care is the tip of the arrow. That’s where it starts. The majority of behavioral health drugs are prescribed at the primary care level; you’d know that really well from your own experience. How do we get them to have a better understanding of where their patients are, and do they maybe need to refer those patients out? So we’ve really focused now on the relationship between primary care and behavioral health, where primary care screens, and we electronically automate the referral process to a behavioral health practice that might be able to handle those patients with more acute symptoms.
Kevin Pho: Now, coming from that tech side and seeing this primary care and behavioral health intersection, is there anything that surprised you about that intersection, coming from the tech side?
Ernie Wallerstein: Yeah, maybe from the human side, I’m surprised by how many people are scared about this, even providers. I’ve talked to cardiologists who are like, “I’m here trying to solve this problem. I’m not in a position, I don’t have the time to go deal with the behavioral health issues, even though I know it’s a contributing factor.” And that was really surprising. I understood, though, that they’re overwhelmed. It’s an overwhelming issue, and it’s just growing. The stats are amazing: one in five adults, and it’s now moving its way down to 11-year-olds. The suicide rates are going up. So that was a surprise.
The other realization I’ve come to, Kevin, is that technology is a contributing factor to the mental health issue that we’re facing, especially for kids. They’re inundated with negative information because of the world we live in. I always like to give this little story: When I was a kid, if there was a bully, you had two choices. You punched, or you ran. Now bullies are 24/7, they’re around the world, and it’s nonstop. So I’ve come to that realization, that technology has been a bit of a cause of it, but technology properly applied, a technology like MHT, is a massive tool for the health care industry.
And moving on to the corporate world, companies are now taking on ESG programs, environmental and social governance. When a disgruntled employee, well, disgruntled is the wrong word, when an employee who’s suffering is nonproductive, they’re looking for help, and corporations need to embrace this as well. Technology can be a big part of safely identifying people who need help and stratifying the level of help they might need.
Kevin Pho: So what you said about addressing behavioral health from a primary care standpoint certainly resonates with me, and just like you said, it’s not just the cardiologists. I think all of us are just so pressed for time, so a lot of us could use all the tools that we can get when it comes to addressing this issue. So how do you see technology like MHT helping solve the behavioral health crisis?
Ernie Wallerstein: So “solving” is a big word, but contributing to the solution, if you will. A couple of points you made: You have 15 minutes. So with technology, software like ours, our software allows patients, at their own pace, on a cell phone or on a computer, to take some mental health screenings, or actually substance abuse screenings, and these are all recognized by the American Psychological Association. They’re DSM-IV and DSM-5 compliant, and your audience knows what that means. And they do it ahead of the visit.
So let’s just paint the picture. I’m coming to see you. A day before I come in, I might take a depression screen, I might take an anxiety screen, maybe a social determinants of health screen, which is becoming a big deal: Are people comfortable in their home, and do they have the proper living environment? So I take those screens ahead of coming in, those results are processed, and if there is some type of abnormal score there, or something to be alerted to, you as the provider would know that in the patient record: “Hey, Ernie, you’ve scored really high for depression.” “Ernie had suicidal ideation.” “Ernie doesn’t really have a good living situation.”
So instead of you having to do those things, because if you have to ask me those questions, that’s a five-minute transaction, and you have five other patients waiting, that alert’s already there. Your MA already knows, your PA already knows, and there are people who can start dealing with that up front. You’re starting to stratify who really needs your time as the doctor and who might be able to be handled by another resource. And so technology is allowing us to identify the people up front, it’s allowing us to help decide what level of care they need, and that makes the doctor’s time way more efficient.
I was talking to a physical therapist, and in this case, she told me that 30 percent of her time is spent talking to people about their behavioral health issues, either during therapy or before. So in that situation, if we’re able to identify those people up front and let her know, she can prepare for that, and maybe someone else in the office can talk to the patient versus her. That just becomes even more important when you get to the doctor level; their time is even less available. So how do we help you provide a better level of care in a more efficient manner? And that’s where MHT comes in.
Kevin Pho: So let’s talk about the workflow, both from the patient standpoint and the clinician standpoint. Let’s start with the patient standpoint first. How would they get started with your platform?
Ernie Wallerstein: Sure. Today we’re not business-to-consumer; we’re business-to-business. Our audience is health care providers and/or corporations who are starting to put ESG programs in place. But for your audience, let’s focus on the health care providers. We’re integrated with the EMR, the electronic medical record system, and whenever an appointment is created, it’s based on the rules you tell us, Kevin. You’re the medical director for your practice. You say, “These patients, in these scenarios, I want them to get these screens.” So that’s automated.
So I have an appointment, and one day or two days before my appointment, I receive an email or a text message telling me, “Hey, my trusted advisor, my family doctor, my behavioral health doctor or nurse or PA or social worker, is saying, ‘Hey, take this screen.'” I do that because I know it’s coming from a trusted source, and those results are then immediately written into the EMR. This is an important part of our technology, and I think it’s important for the health care industry: We’re not teaching people another platform. The health care industry has enough to deal with, with their EMR and with billing issues with the insurance providers. We’re not trying to teach them a whole other platform. We integrate seamlessly into your existing workflow.
So to walk through it again: I, as a patient, set an appointment. I would automatically receive, based on the business rules set by that practice, certain screening tests. I respond to those, and those results are written into the EMR. If there is an event that requires some type of alerting, we both highlight that in the EMR, and we, being MHT, can send a text message or email to the appropriate resource. An example of that would be somebody with suicidal ideation: Does someone need to call that person now? Another example would be someone who’s in behavioral health, they’re still scoring really high for depression, they’ve tried a whole bunch of different drugs, and they’ve been at this for 10 years. We’ll ask them a question: Are they interested in learning about a more advanced treatment, like transcranial magnetic stimulation or Spravato? When they say yes, that allows a different department in that health care provider to engage with that patient and try to help get that patient a better journey to wellness.
Kevin Pho: So what are the different ways a patient can fill out the questionnaire?
Ernie Wallerstein: Sure. The most popular way is the cell phone. We’ll send a text message; people are comfortable on their cell phones. I’ll tell you a quick anecdotal story here in a second. Or they can do emails. If those two methods don’t work, either because the person hasn’t gotten to it or maybe they’re not comfortable with those devices, they can also take it on a tablet at the doctor’s office. Any one of those mediums is available. They can increase their font size, and it’s language-specific. Especially in the U.S., you have a large English-speaking and a large Spanish-speaking population, so as long as the EMR tells us what their primary language is, we’ll give them the tests in that language. So they take it, they can take their time, and they’re comfortable with it.
The anecdote I was going to share with you is that someone said, “Well, how’s that going to work for seniors?” There’s a large Medicare population in the U.S., and this person ran a large practice that dealt with lots of seniors. They had over 10,000 senior lives under their care in their practice. And anecdotally, well, it’s not anecdote, he said, “Hey, I’m assuming 20 percent of my patients would fill this out.” And this is the beauty of technology; data is a big part of this. I was able to look, and 44 percent of all seniors filled out these forms on the first attempt last year from us. So I knew that almost a 50 percent hit rate of people would do it.
I have a 92-year-old dad. My dad’s on his computer every day, because that’s how he communicates with the world; he can’t get around anymore. So he’s on Facebook all the time. He’s accepting a lot of the wrong ads and clicking a lot of buttons, which costs me time to fix. But I think our senior population is more comfortable with technology than we give them credit for, and these assessments, if you will, delivered by MHT, allow them to do it at their pace, with a larger font, and the way they want to.
The other key part here, since you ask about the patient experience, is that they’re going to be more honest with an inanimate object than talking to another human being about their state of depression or anxiety or alcoholism, because they’re not being judged. I think when people ask us questions, we feel like we’re being judged, whereas if we really want help and we’re talking to an inanimate object like our email or our cell phone, we’re going to answer honestly. And there are plenty of statistics online that back that up. So the user experience has been fantastic.
We send it out to the patient a day or two before, we’ll send them a reminder, and if they didn’t take it, when they walk in, we let that front desk staff know, “Hey, this patient has some pending assessments to be filled out.” From a medical professional standpoint, it looks like a lab. It’s just that this is a mental health assessment versus a urine sample or a blood test.
Kevin Pho: So you mentioned there’s a menu of assessments that we could send to patients. What are some of the different things that we could screen for?
Ernie Wallerstein: Sure. I mean, the big ones are depression and anxiety, because of how many people they affect. But there’s opioid addiction, ADHD, there’s bipolar, and there’s postpartum depression. That’s a big one. Statistically, with postpartum depression, I mean, the stats are amazing. It’s like one in five women suffer from postpartum depression right after childbirth, and 15 percent get help. That’s mind-boggling. So if you’re a women’s health clinic, you should screen. Let’s get these people help. That’s better for them, they have a healthier life, it’s better for their family, and it’s certainly better for their child. And most of them want help.
There are obviously different levels of depression. We have about 45 different indications we test for, Kevin, and we’re always adding more based on the requirements or requests from our customers. We have a couple of pain clinics using our system, so they’re worried about opioid pain scales, and they’re worried about drug use. Those are just a sampling of them, but again, there are about 45 different ones, and we’re always adding more.
Kevin Pho: So let’s say I’m an MHT client. I walk into my office at 8 o’clock in the morning and load up my EHR. What could I see?
Ernie Wallerstein: Sure. And it’s important that it works that way. We at MHT are going to work within your current workflow. There are some providers who do everything within the patient chart, and there are other providers who do it from their dashboard, so we’re writing to a couple of different spots. We write results to the labs, your general lab tab as a provider. We identify the patient and the provider when we provide information to the EMR.
So in your dashboard, you’d see, “Hey, I have some labs pending for today,” and you could see a quick dashboard that says, “OK, here are these 12 MHT results for your six patients.” But when you go into the patient chart as well, in the general chart, it says, “Hey, here is a summary of the tests that your patient took.” They took a PHQ-9, they took a GAD-7, and they took a social determinants of health screen. I’m just using those as examples because in primary care, those are the three big ones. That, and then the DAST, which is a drug screen, and the AUDIT, which is for alcohol. Those are big in primary care because of the number of people suffering from it, but also, it’s within CMS guidelines. CMS actually recommends that health care professionals, as part of annual screenings, do both mental health and drug and alcohol screens for their Medicare patients.
So it’s in your dashboard, and it’s also in that patient record that I took my test. The actual PDF with every answer I gave is there too. The average doctor’s not going to that, right, Kevin? They’re too busy. But if we’ve given them an alert saying, “Hey, there’s something to look at here,” they might look at it.
The other big thing we’ll do, too, is chart and graph patients’ results over time. So now imagine that patient moved from primary care to behavioral health. Now we’re not just tracking who needed help; we’re tracking the efficacy of treatment over the last year that this patient’s been on that drug or under this treatment. From their own objective opinion, are they getting better? So we can graph that. I can graph the patient’s depression scores, and you can maybe see a point of inflection: Did something change in treatment? And all that’s visual, and it’s an indicator for the provider or their staff to take a deeper dive, because there’s something that doesn’t look right, or, “Hey, things look great, let’s move on,” which is also very important.
Kevin Pho: So tell us a story or case study, just so we can see these concepts in action. Tell us a story where MHT technology has moved the needle.
Ernie Wallerstein: So I’ll give you a couple. I’ll give you one from a behavioral health perspective. I was working with a large behavioral health practice and sat down with their medical director. They were a very large practice; they had over 100 providers, so it’s hard to look at everything. We said, “OK, we’re going to pick a couple of different providers, look at their patients, and deep dive.” The medical director here was just this brilliant pharmacology person when it came to behavioral health, and we were able to look at the charts of patients and just see that their test scores were not moving, nowhere off the dial.
That medical director, with 100 different providers, was then able to go in and look at five or six example cases based on the stats I was providing him, dive into the pharmacology, what drugs were being administered, and then sit down and review that information with their provider, with the psychologist, psychiatrist, or nurse practitioner, and say, “Hey, look, this isn’t working. Have we tried this?” Now, over a six-month period, he was able to hit about 18 or 20 patients, but more importantly, he was able to talk to about 12 different providers and give them other ideas of how to improve their patients’ care. Those providers are touching hundreds of patients. So this is a way to really raise the level of quality using data, to say, “This is where, as a medical director, I need to dive in, not just for that one patient but for all the patients that come after.” So that was one example in the behavioral health world.
Anecdotally, from a primary care standpoint, we deal with a primary care provider in Florida, and they knew that they were going to have a significant population of people with behavioral health issues. The owner of the practice had been really thinking about, “Should I bring in a PsyD psychologist, one or two, to provide a higher level of care for my patients? Because I know they need it.” And leveraging our technology, we were able to do a couple of things. A, we were able to automatically identify patients. Our technology allows patients to be screened, but based on their test score, it asks them whether they would like a higher level of care. So when they said yes, we basically created an internal referral process to their own PsyD.
That PsyD was overwhelmed very quickly. There are a lot of people. You go see the doctor; I mean, statistically, there were 900 million doctor visits last year. We know 20 percent of all people suffer from behavioral health issues, and we also know that 50 percent go untreated or undiagnosed. That means that 90 million times last year, someone saw the doc who needed help and didn’t get any. So using that stat, this PsyD got overwhelmed quickly. Because of our technology, we were able to not only refer patients to their PsyD but create an overflow to one of our behavioral health partners. So now this practice, within a matter of three months, went from just primary care to now offering behavioral health services to their patients, and could do it in a way that was both cost-effective for them and didn’t overwhelm the practice.
Kevin Pho: Now, is the service covered by private insurers, as well as Medicare and Medicaid?
Ernie Wallerstein: Yeah. So I didn’t share my biggest surprise when you asked me. I was surprised. As an outsider in tech, you’ll learn a lot about the insurance industry and you hear stuff, but when you dive into health care, you’ll learn a lot more. So it is. A lot of the commercial insurers base their initial basis on what CMS policies are. So yes, these tests, both in primary care and in behavioral health, are covered by insurance. The only one where it deviates on a per-state basis is Medicaid, but Medicare pays for it consistently, and all the commercial providers pay for it consistently.
And, Kevin, this is somewhat of a presumptive thing, but let’s call it an educated guess, a hypothesis, if you will: That’s only going to get better. It’s only going to get better because of how expensive behavioral health is if it’s untreated. The last thing any insurance company wants, be it pay-for-service, or a risk-based contract, or capitated, the thing that breaks all the models, is visits to the ER, if they could be avoided. So I do believe the insurance industry is starting to get a little bit more in tune. They’ve always been scared of behavioral health. There’s no X-ray, there’s no MRI; it’s someone’s opinion. And in the end, I actually believe the data we’re accumulating is going to be invaluable to insurance companies, because that allows their actuaries to actually figure out what’s working, what’s not working, and what the cost of care is.
And depending on what camp you’re in here, the world is either moving to more social medicine or more capitated. The insurance industry doesn’t make it hard on docs, I’ve definitely learned that, Kevin. But screening up front, identifying earlier, leading people to off-ramps that progress, self-help, online help, then maybe different levels of professionals, before you get to that ER, before you get to that specialist, I mean, that just benefits everybody. It benefits the patient, it benefits our overwhelmed health care industry, and in the end, it’s also going to benefit our insurance industry.
Kevin Pho: What are some of your biggest challenges when it comes to positioning MHT with potential customers?
Ernie Wallerstein: So I think if I talk to primary care, they typically have four concerns. One is: Does this make clinical sense for my practice? Let’s just say that’s the easiest one to overcome. The average doctor, nurse, and PA, they’re all good people, they’re trying to help people, and they know behavioral health is a big part of why someone’s sick, or a result of being sick. Then it has to make financial sense: Is it reimbursed? A private practice especially continues to get squeezed. It’s expensive to run a health care practice, and the margins are low. I was really surprised by that, what the margin in primary care is. I thought it would be some big numbers, like six to eight percent. So they need to know that it makes financial sense.
They need to know it’s easy to use. It’s got to be simple, and it’s got to be intuitive. The health care industry has been hit, just like every other industry, in terms of the supply of employees, especially at that admin layer, so they can’t encumber their administrative staff with more tasks. And they need to know that this thing is very intuitive for the providers. To your point, you’ve got 15 minutes in and out, and you’ve got a lot going on. So it’s got to be really intuitive. And the last one is that they need to know what they do if they identify someone who’s outside of their skill set. So we always engage with primary care with the behavioral health partner in mind that they can do referrals to.
So when I look at challenges in the primary care world, I think, interestingly, when we first started out, technology was a challenge. The health care industry wasn’t the most technologically adept industry. Amazingly, COVID has sped up the health care industry’s learning: conferencing, video, online, remote access. I’m not saying the health care industry is the most technical industry, but it definitely got educated fast over the last three years, and that gap got bridged. The other big challenge is that we have to prove the billing. There’s a lot going on in health care, and they have to know that this is going to be reimbursed and it’s going to be profitable for them to be able to spend the effort, because there are a lot of other options going on. And that’s specific to health care, I think.
When I look at a challenge in the corporate world, the challenge in the corporate world is that they’re scared of identifying how many people need help. So they’re just like, “OK, if you did first responders, a large percentage of them are going to have, you’re going to have a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and stuff. OK, well, we can’t just give everybody time off.” So you have to go in and speak with them, Kevin, not only with, “Hey, let’s identify people, let’s also stratify them,” but with partners who can help address the issue along the way.
To maybe summarize that a little bit, we need to just check the boxes, so that people know that this is efficient, that it’s cost-effective and actually could be profitable, and that we as a technology partner, we’re not just a technology partner, we’re also bringing a strategy there, where we’re bringing solutions along with us, because we know they’re going to identify people who need help. We know a fifth of the workforce is going to need help. We know a fifth of the patients need help. We know a lot of people are depressed.
Here’s an interesting stat for you, and this is across 60,000 data points just last year: 60,000 people took the PHQ-9, which is a very popular depression screen. Twenty-two percent indicated moderately severe to severe, which is a score of 15 or higher out of 27. Sixty percent of those who indicated high said they would like some help. Sixty percent. So these are people who know they’re suffering, and they want help.
Kevin Pho: Today we have a special sponsored episode. I’m joined by Ernie Wallerstein, CEO of Mental Health Technologies, or MHT. MHT is a cloud-based platform that enables health care providers to identify patients that may be suffering from undiagnosed or inadequately treated mental health and substance abuse disorders. Find out more at mhtech.com. That’s mhtech.com.
Ernie, you’ve been at that crossroads of health care and technology for years now. Where do you see that intersection going moving forward?
Ernie Wallerstein: So I actually believe the intersection is going to move forward, Kevin. That’s a great question. I think the adoption of technology in health care and in corporate social governance programs is going to accelerate. We’re all of the understanding now that this isn’t something we can ignore. Luckily, we’ve had athletes, we’ve had superstars, we have people coming out and talking about mental health issues and not being ashamed of it. In my generation, it wasn’t something you talked about, but for my kids, it’s an open conversation. And because there’s more awareness around it, I really believe the adoption of technology like MHT, and the embracing of that technology, is going to accelerate.
So I think the horizon is bright, and it’s coming fast. This train has left the station; it is picking up a lot of momentum. And ultimately, there are not enough people to help the number of people who need help. So we’ve got to come up with some technological solutions. We have some self-help solutions, and we have to come up with ways to help the health care industry actually address this.
And then you get to the predictive models. By gathering this information and cross-referencing it with treatments, cross-referencing it with genomic information, cross-referencing it with demographic information, we can start getting ahead of this. We can start predicting mental health and substance abuse issues. You can take our software, and once we have a million data points, and we’re well on our way there, we’ll have that within the next 12 months, you have enough data points to go to the city of LA and say, “Based on your current demographics, and based on these million data points, there’s a good chance you’re going to have X, 150,000 depressed people, in 2030. Get ready for it.”
And there are not more people going to med school right now. There are fewer people going to med school right now in terms of percentage of population, because it’s a very expensive proposition, and now there’s a glass ceiling on how much money you make. It’s a business; it’s an economic issue. And who wants $300,000 of debt? So there have to be other, again, as I call them, off-ramps along the way. And technology like ours, very much like ours, is going to allow us to start doing predictive models on what’s required and what’s coming. We can’t predict COVID, the impact of COVID, but we could be way better prepared for COVID the next time it happens, and unfortunately, it’ll happen again. And the 100-year storm will happen again next year. The amount of stress and anxiety because of Hurricane Ian is off the charts. But by starting to build predictive models using AI and leveraging these data points, we’ll be better prepared as a society to deal with this. And that’s where I think this goes.
Kevin Pho: And my final question: What are some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?
Ernie Wallerstein: This is a biased opinion, but I think every health care professional is responsible for the mental wellness of their patients. I know it’s an unfair statement, because there’s so much more going on. I’m in these doctors’ offices all the time. There’s not a lot of time to spare. People are looking around, and they’re ultimately trying to help their people, help their patients. But I do think that mental health is now the number one issue in the world. COVID was bad, but mental health affects way more people than COVID did. COVID was a horrible thing, and it contributed to this, but this problem isn’t going away.
And I think it’s about leveraging technology, knowing that it’s not cost-prohibitive, there’s a financial benefit, the government gets it, and the insurance industry is getting it, or starting to get it, that a technology like this will help you identify the people that need your time and realize the people that are OK, so you can do this in an efficient fashion. I think we’re all responsible for it. Ultimately, someone getting screened for behavioral health or substance abuse should be the same as taking their blood pressure. Blood pressure became a preventative measure because the number of people with cardiac issues became too costly. We’re on the same path when it comes to mental health, and we have to get preventative about it. So screening for behavioral health and substance abuse should be part of any preventative care philosophy or program.
Kevin Pho: And how can people find out more about MHT?
Ernie Wallerstein: Our website’s quite good, actually. I’m really proud of our marketing director, Jens Alice, and our website’s really informative. So it’s www, like everyone, mhtech, M-H-T-E-C-H, .com, and you can get in contact with us there. There are some videos on there, and there’s lots of information about the company.
Kevin Pho: Ernie, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.
Ernie Wallerstein: Thank you very much to you and your audience, Kevin. Thank you.
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