Medssenger Team
As recently published in The Business Journal, we are excited to announce Washburn House has officially launched Medssenger. Part of Platinum Healthcare, Washburn House is a 48-bed inpatient addiction treatment center in Massachusetts. Medssenger helps Washburn House with their mission to provide their patients with the best treatment on their way to recovery.
At Washburn House, patients complete worksheets online toward addressing diagnoses, meeting therapy goals and transitioning post-discharge. Patients also evaluate themselves and their treatment through periodic surveys. And patients receive an inspirational quote and check in daily, with Washburn House continuing to monitor the patient status even after discharge. All of this happens on Medssenger.
From patient to clinician, there is seamless and easy access to therapy and feedback, as well as all data records in graphs tracking progress overtime. Among everyone involved in care: there is comprehensive handoff of information about patients during treatment and after discharge. One patient at Washburn commented: “I like it. It’s like you’re not alone.”
Far too often, current addiction treatment strategies lack the technology to deliver the individualized treatment and the collaborative aftercare planning needed for sustained sobriety. Furthermore, the history of that treatment and the objective measures that demonstrate progress are often inaccessible by the patient post-treatment. Instead, with Medssenger, patients build a portfolio while inpatient and then build on that portfolio after discharge. Because Medssenger is an app on their phones, patients have access to their history and they have a lifeline back to Washburn House for support should they need it.
Due especially to opioid epidemic, much of the focus is on attempting to treat the masses in order to reduce the overdose death rate and to reduce harm. However this can lead to neglect of the individual – often due to lack of usable systems to facilitate the volume of case management. Each patient has a different unique situation that doctors must target; Medssenger can step in to provide customized and personalized treatment plans for each patient, enable collaboration and care coordination and facilitate follow up care and outcome tracking after they have left a facility. This results in coordination across the continuum and better outcomes.
Each patient has various providers such as clinics and healthcare groups; in the past, communication between these groups has been difficult. Through Medssenger, the patient and providers have 24/7 access to one another and are able to hand off patient information seamlessly through efficient workflows. Currently, the patient is often released from facilities without a plan for life after treatment, leading to relapses. Medssenger packages patient information for pass off to other providers and support groups to ensure continuum of care for the patient. These changes are needed more than ever, as drug overdoses and the opioid epidemic have taken increasing number of lives in America.
Medssenger’s successful launch at the Washburn House showcases its potential to be a powerful, unique solution to many of the inefficiencies in the field of behavioral health. Many addiction treatment centers like Washburn are seeing increasing costs and rates of relapse among their patients. Although addiction is considered a highly treatable disease, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that the relapse rates in addiction treatment are between 40 and 60 percent. Furthermore, many facilities face internal problems such as communication inefficiencies, coordination failures, and workflow fragmentation simply as a result of limited tools and capability. For instance, most treatment centers do not have the capability to follow up with their patients and often require the patients to coordinate co-occurring treatment programs themselves. Treatment in silos has become a major issue in behavioral healthcare. Much like changes made at Washburn, Medssenger is planning to adapt its capabilities to the entire field of behavioral health and initiate large-scale launches at many more addiction treatment centers and other behavioral health centers to provide integrated care that will improve outcome and reduce costs for both patients and providers.