SBIR-STTR Award

The United States is experiencing a major mental health crisis. Per recent reports in the New York Times and The Washington Post, the gap between need and access to behavioral health services is rapidly increasing. There is an urgent need to solve both the access and quality problems with behavioral healthcare. With COVID and other stressors, 76% of surveyed employees are reporting at least one significant behavioral health symptom and 27% believe their employer is not doing enough to assist their family with their anxiety, depression, and other behavioral health issues. Another report indicated that adults are on wait lists for 3+ months to receive outpatient therapy in Massachusetts. There simply are not enough therapists to meet the growing demand and waiting lists are long and growing. On the quality side, more than 60% of patients find no meaningful benefit from the treatment they receive. We have already created a system that dramatically improved the quality problem in a randomized clinical trial: this referral process roughly doubled network outcomes for the primary referral channel for the Cleveland Clinic, improving outcomes compared to a control group where cases were assigned based on therapists self-perceived strengths. In the current application we aim to solve the access problem by developing Consumer-Therapist-Connector. This innovative online tool will expeditiously connect patients with well-matched therapists for traditional therapy by distance search, or telemedicine by state or national searches. What distinguishes our solution from other online find-a-therapist systems is that the patient can be easily added to the waitlist of all empirically well-matched providers, which increases the likelihood they will connect quickly with a good-fitting therapist. It will alleviate the growing anguish patients encounter when calling numerous providers only to learn that their practices are full. At the same time, these waiting lists will dramatically increase the opportunity to use our proven matching technology to simultaneously improve quality, encouraging consumers and providers to offer and accept appointments only when a match is likely to greatly benefit the patient.

Public Health Relevance Statement:
PROJECT NARRATIVE We propose to develop an innovative tool called Consumer-Therapist-Connector to increase consumer access to the therapists who have had patients with successful therapeutic outcomes in the consumers' specific area(s) of need. Waitlists, while frustrating, are unavoidable in the current marketplace given serious supply and demand inequities for behavioral health care. Within this new flexible, secure, online system, we will reduce the administrative burden on vulnerable patients and overbooked therapists, while maximizing therapy access and quality.

Project Terms:
21+ years old; Adult Human; adulthood; Adult; Theriacs; Antidotes; Anxiety; Appointment; Assertiveness; Award; Computers; Control Groups; Decision Making; Mental Depression; depression; Family; Frustration; Health; Health Services; Joints; Learning; Libraries; Massachusetts; Mental Health; Mental Hygiene; Psychological Health; Modernization; Persons; New York; Online Systems; On-Line Systems; online computer; web based; Outpatients; Out-patients; Patients; Publishing; health care quality; healthcare quality; Science; Surveys; Survey Instrument; Technology; Telephone; Phone; Testing; Time; United States; Waiting Lists; waitlist; Washington; Administrator; health care; Healthcare; Caring; Telemedicine; improved; Area; Phase; psychological; psychologic; randomized, clinical trials; tool; programs; Side; Clinic; System; Benchmarking; Best Practice Analysis; benchmark; Surgeon; experience; stressor; Employee; Anguish; Mental Suffering; Reporting; Positioning Attribute; Position; Deterioration; Modeling; behavioral health; Provider; Effectiveness; Address; Symptoms; Data; Callback; therapy outcome; therapeutic outcome; Monitor; trend; Process; Development; developmental; Evidence based treatment; traditional therapy; Outcome; Mind; innovate; innovative; innovation; user-friendly; prototype; high risk; evidence base; primary outcome; flexible; flexibility; Secure; improved outcome; recruit; Wait Time; COVID19; CV-19; CV19; corona virus disease 2019; coronavirus disease 2019; coronavirus disease-19; coronavirus infectious disease-19; COVID-19; CoV disease; corona virus disease; COVID; coronavirus disease; stakeholder insights; stakeholder perspectives; Inequity