Another Podcast??

I’m going to be totally honest, I learned we were launching a SAS Health and Life Sciences Podcast (that I’ll even be a guest on) and I wasn’t that excited about it. 

Sometimes, it feels like a lot of health care stories have already been told. 

Then, I did something totally out of the ordinary for me. 

I actually listened to it 🤣

Episode two (Here) features Dr. Josh Morgan, National Director of Behavioral Health and Whole Person Care at SAS, and we share one very important trait in common (no, it’s not Star Trek because I’ve literally never seen an episode and he admits to being “More Star Trek than Psychologist” in the opening minutes!). I’ll tell what it is at the end. 

First, I want to talk about the time as a practicing psychologist he met a 12-year old girl seeking care in a behavioral health facility who had already hit her lifetime maximum for insurance coverage. What does the family do after that?

While there have always been barriers to behavioral health care, something we are recognizing even more during a pandemic, like stigma, culture, and comfort, Dr. Morgan points out that historically, many of those barriers were also systems in place, such as insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse that was non-existent or very low. 

Virtual Care is starting to turn the tide for a few of the prominent barriers – specifically stigma (now you don’t have to worry about “being seen” seeking care), and comfort and safety (potentially in your own home, car or “safe space”).  

I love how Dr. Morgan talks about changing the incentives, or at least adding to them. Right now in Behavioral Health, most of the incentives are “reduction” based. Metrics like: less crisis visits, less emergency room visits, decreasing criminal justice recidivism, and more. 

The systems, structures, benefits and policies all work together to “reduce hospitalizations” and cost, but what if they worked together to increase positive incentives around volunteerism, social connectedness, and hope?

If that’s what gets measured, there are huge long term financial and human impacts. 

Many will immediately jump to, “well, how do you measure hope or social connectedness”? 

This is where Dr. Morgan’s analytic expertise shines, as he explains that even though there may not be a number that captures the essence of what hope is, there are tools like Natural Language Processing and Text Analytics that can tap into a range of data sources like provider notes to help find where hope is implied. There’s also the power of asking patients and members themselves, something like “how hopeful are you today on a scale from 1-10”? 

When we see blood pressure go up, we know to do something about it. What if we saw hope go down? We should know what to do about it, because that subjective thing may be the most important thing. We can track this, make it quantifiable, and meaningful. 

There are already validated hope scores, and validated social determinant data that can be helpful in knowing the whole-person.  

We can absolutely know more about someone based on what they feel than what we see, and intervene in ways that make a difference. 

Alright, hopefully you haven’t read this far (just go listen to it!), but if you have: I promised the trait we share. 

Hope. 

Optimism. 

I deeply believe, just like Dr. Morgan, that collectively we can get this right. 

I believe we’ll find ways to use data for good, learning about the hopes, fears, and dreams of individuals and treating them in ways that propel them to their healthiest future. 

If you’re still reading this (still?!!), I hope 2021 is your best one yet 🚀

The Health Pulse, part of the SAS Analytics Exchange podcast series, explores fresh perspectives on digital transformation in health care and life sciences. Subscribe on your favorite podcast channel. New episodes released bi-weekly. Have an idea for a topic or guest speaker? Email the series producers at [email protected].