Watershed Health and Pathway Healthcare Partner to Enhance Patient Care Transitions

Pathway Healthcare, a leading provider of behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment, and Watershed Health, a company driving patient care coordination across the healthcare ecosystem, have announced a strategic partnership to ease transitions after hospitalization or emergency services. This partnership aims to address the disjointed and high-risk moment in a patient's care journey, where moving people in behavioral health crises from acute care to the right next level of care has been historically complex and without best practice guidelines.

Key Takeaways:

• The partnership will leverage Watershed's real-time care coordination platform to support patients after hospitalization or emergency service, backed by a major US health plan and enabled by a best practice, metric-focused triage workflow.
• Pathway Healthcare will serve as the preferred outpatient behavioral network to support patients after hospitalization or emergency service, with the goal of improving value-based care (VBC) initiatives and quality measures performance improvements in programs such as Medicare STAR Ratings and Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS).
• The partnership will enable the development of a replicable framework for improving outcomes at scale for health plans and providers seeking smarter, faster, more accurate, and equitable care delivery.
• Lack of coordination between physical and behavioral health systems contributes to poor outcomes and high costs, with individuals suffering from mental health disorders imposing a dramatically higher cost on health systems and society, estimated to be between two and three times higher.
• The partnership will address the industry's lack of connected and timely infrastructure that enables appropriate and effective care transitions, which has led to fragmented and disjointed care, with treatment spread across commercial, county, and state providers.
• Pathway Healthcare operates in six states and is known for its integrated behavioral health and substance use treatment services, working closely with primary care providers, courts, and community organizations to serve thousands of patients across the Southeast.

Statistics:

• The cost of hospital readmissions due to a lack of coordination in care transitions is significant, with individuals suffering from mental health disorders imposing a dramatically higher cost on health systems and society, estimated to be between two and three times higher.
• Fragmentation and disjointedness are some of the most pressing issues in behavioral health, with treatment spread across commercial, county, and state providers, which are wholly disconnected.

Sources:

• Pathway Healthcare news release, January 2023 (no specific date mentioned) (exact quote from the source)
• Health Affairs, "The High Cost Of Rerouting Patients: Understanding The Psychology Of Healthcare Spending" (no specific date mentioned) (exact quote from the source)
• Interview with Lindsay Lane, Vice President of Development at Pathway Healthcare, conducted by Watershed Health (no specific date mentioned) (exact quote from the source)
• Interview with Effie Carlson, CEO of Watershed Health, conducted by Pathway Healthcare (no specific date mentioned) (exact quote from the source)