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The move to inpatient behavioral health

Inova Fairfax Hospital, Inova’s flagship institution.

Falls Church, Va.-based  Inova Health System has joined the hospital sector’s trend toward establishing inpatient behavioral-health units.

As FierceHealth reports:

Inova is joining “a growing number of hospitals around the country that are adding or growing such units after years of efforts to deinstitutionalize mental health care led to shortages of inpatient behavioral health beds.”

For example:

“Children’s Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University recently redesigned its behavioral health center, boosting its inpatient bed count from 24 to 32 beds. San Francisco just opened a 54-bed inpatient facility, Mercy Medical Center recently announced plans to build a proposed 100-bed psychiatric hospital in Iowa and multiple psychiatric hospital projects have already been built or are underway in Massachusetts and New Jersey.”

To read the Fierce article, please hit this link.


Decision tree for patients to decide: ED or urgent-care center

 

Sunil Budhrani, M.D., has spent about 20 years treating patients in emergency departments, so he knows that many people still go to the ED for minor injuries or illnesses.

Dr. Budhrani, now the chief medical officer of Innovation Health, is “amazed” that he continues to see patients come to the ED for  such  minor conditions as cuts, bruises and sore throats, he said in a recent interview with FierceHealthcare. Innovation Health is a joint venture of Aetna and Inova Health System, which serves the Washington, D.C. metro area.

A new feature of that effort is an illustrated decision tree  that help patients  decide which place — ED or urgent-care center — is warranted by certain symptoms.

Innovation Health  distributes this guidance information to providers as well as directly to patients.

Dr. Budhrani can  communicate directly with the medical directors of a major health system such as  Inova about how to instruct members about the services  that Innovation Health offers. Innovation Health also uses its contractual relationships with other providers to let them know that it has one of the largest networks of urgent-care centers in its region.

Great for expanding  and diversifying its customer base.

To read more, please hit this link.


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