Aurora Health Care provides health care services to the community within the primary care settings in different sections of medication. One of the major specifications of Aurora Health Care centers is mental health. The organization has a program in place that helps individuals struggling with mental health problems such as depression and anxiety that require frequency treatment. Aurora HealthCare's Mental Health program is designed to operate within the community in order to meet the medication need for patients with mental issues and otherwise not having their behavioral health needs met. The program, which is integrated into different Aurora HealthCare's Mental Health centers and their partners’ health centers such as Metro Community Provider Network (MCPN) and Rocky Mountain Youth Clinics (RMYC) have a team of behavioral specialist. The teams provide consultation to medical providers and evaluate and assess different behavioral health concerns (Aurora Mental Health Center, Inc., 2019). The behavioral health specialist of Aurora HealthCare's Mental Health program also provides screening services, interventions, and education programs, therapy, case, and crisis management. The main goals of this program is to ensure Aurora HealthCare's Mental Health specialist work close with behavioral health providers in order to increase access to behavioral health services, increase satisfaction of patients to access to mental health services, reduce the stigma that is currently associated with the mental health care, and ensure the overall health outcome within communities is improved through a reduce healthcare costs.
Therefore, this paper will evaluate different aspects and factors associated with Aurora HealthCare's Mental Health program and how the program can be improved to ensure improved primary care services concerning mental patients is improved. The program strategic plan is also evaluated to identify different ways in which to improve prevention strategies, early identification strategies, and prevention strategies to mental conditions that can need to serious physical illness such as chronic diseases.
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TRENDS IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE
The growth of managed health care services such as mental health care within the medication industry has faced different trends that affect the policies that affect the delivery and access to programmed health care services. With the coverage of mental health care in specific, there are several trends that are examined. The first one is the delivery of mental health care services. In the past few decades, there have been changes that have strike in the way mental health care services are delivered. For instance, fifty years ago, mental health care services were delivered in hospitals and specialty mental clinics by government-owned psychiatrists. However, this seen changed, with now individuals preferring to receive mental health care services on outpatient services established within their community settings. This has seen the public hospitals mental health care services, reducing from 70 percent to 15 percent. The other factor that has affected the delivery of mental health care services is the growth of insurance-based financings such as Medicaid and Medicare. This development has fostered the emergence of markets that provide greater autonomy and choice for individuals having mental health problems as consumers of health care. As consumers, individuals through insurance-based financing are able to receive community-based care services.
The other trend within the health mental care is the efficacy of treatment for mental disorders. In the recent past, the mental health sector has benefited from significant gains that have been conducted in the pharmaceutical technology which have resulted in the development of a range of effective treatments that have fewer side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been on the leading front of faster discovery and approval of new drugs in the recent years that have contributed to an increase of drugs use for therapies (Barry, 2004). However, this has resulted in a gap between the discoveries and incorporation of these drugs to routine care patient in everyday clinical practices. Several pieces of research have established that evidence-best practices are not well balanced across a range of service settings. For instance, since more people seek medication in primary-based care settings, the linkage between the primary and special mental health care providers is low. This can be ascertained in medication prescription rate where psychiatrists currently conduct a third of psychotropic medication, while two-thirds are conducted by a primary care physician. This tends to be a problem as evidence has shown that most primary care physicians lack the standard training, financial capabilities, and time for appropriate detection and treatment of mental disorders.
There has been an increase in state responsibility growth for mental health care through state mental authorities in recent years. With improved medication delivery, more environments have been developed for mentally challenged patients to operate from giving the state mental authorities efficient time to monitor them and become the watch-guards of the privatized of a public safety net (Mechanic, 1998). The state mental authorities also establish appropriate standards and norms and providing necessary data and measures in terms of monitoring the subgroups. With the active involvement of states in the mental health care services, more partnership with health specialist has been incorporated in the vulnerable subpopulations.
Lastly, disparities in mental health services are another current issue in mental health care. Significant disparities have been reported by several research studies to exits in the United States. According to these studies, minorities in terms of culture, ethnicity, and race less likely to seek medication or access medication compared to whites. however, those who seek the medication majority end up receiving poor quality mental health care to that the whites receive despite both having similar community rates of mental conditions (Barry, 2004). Asian Americans are established to use less service per capita than any other ethnic or racial group in medication. The African Americans were established to be likely to receive mental treatment from any sources which were half that of whites. Several studies also indicate that people suffering from mental disorders and are remotely located encounter more problem in terms of mental health care service access due to limited availability of providers, lower income, and social stigma.
MISSION AND VISION STATEMENT
Aurora Health Care vision statement is “a community where all residents have an opportunity for health”. The mission of Aurora Health Care is to work collaboratively to enhance access to healthcare and create a healthier Aurora focusing on those individuals that are most vulnerable and underserved within the community. Aurora HealthCare which is a not-for-profit organization provides more than 90 communities with health care services throughout Wisconsin and northern Illinois (Comparably, 2019). The organization service provision is estimated at 1.2 million people per year the process that is conducted via comprehensive health network facilities, services, and providers. The network comprises of 15 hospitals, 159 pharmacies, and over 300,000 health providers. The goal of the organization is to achieve the best possible care provision for today and through further innovations for improving the care delivery for tomorrow.
Aurora HealthCare organization has guiding principles that it operates upon. The guiding principles include serving as a catalyst, coalition-builder, and impartial convener. The other guiding principle for Aurora HealthCare is to build and nature collaboration that enhances understanding and seek solutions to Aurora’s healthcare problems. Aurora Health Care organization is committed to providing an inclusive, productive, and respectful approach within communities in terms of problem-solving and discussion for health solutions. The organization operates on the principle of engagement and listening to all stakeholders who are directly affected by community health problems (Aurora Health Alliance, n.d). The organization also engages other organizations in the health sector, the government, and communities to participate through offering multiple ways of participation. As health provision organization, Aurora Health Care, does not ignore the existing processes but identify, promote and build upon the strategies that are already working well within communities to enhance health care services. Lastly, the organization supports new and emerging health providers, professionals, leaders, and activists in community-based health care through acknowledging their contributions and celebrating their successes.
STRATEGIC PLANNING AND EVALUATION METHODS
Aurora HealthCare organization strategic plan concerning mental health program is divided into four different sections. The sections include:
Integration
The integration strategy of Aurora HealthCare consists of initiatives which include population health management, care redesign, and information technology. Population health management initiative has been well managed by Aurora HealthCare for the past six years. The organization has then found its strength in the population health management which has resulted in the coverage of over 46,000 employees and their dependents with the organization arching an average decrease of 1.75 per-member-per-months from 2012 to 2014. Through the population health management, Aurora HealthCare was able to establish The Aurora Network which is composed of hospitals, clinics, Aurora employed physicians and other physicians that offer a unique value proposition. The Aurora Network together with Anthem and Aetna who are one of the largest insurers enabled the organization to market itself in Wisconsin. This led to other parties joining the co-organization which boosted its health delivery including mental health care that was established a special branch of the organization.
When it comes to caring redesign initiative of Aurora HealthCare, the focus is on the provision of infrastructure that is capable of providing support to population health management. The care redesign initiative is also to improve the quality of health delivery and managing cost and total health care spending. The care redesign has enabled the primary care mental health care delivery has significantly improved. This has led to the inclusion of specialty care, home care and hospital care that are well coordinated. The redesigned model of health care delivery by Aurora is expected to significantly increase the primary capacity of mental health care delivery. It is also to improve continues delivery of mental care services to more individuals across the country that cannot afford mental health medication through the team-based care structured. The last initiative of integration is information technology (Aurora Health Care, Inc. and Affiliates, n.d). Aurora HealthCare has significantly improved its technological capabilities through the provision of electronic health record for each patient that is included in their mental health program. The electronic health record also known as SmartChart enables the physicians to monitor the progress of the patient more efficient and also enhances patient engagement in the treatment process. The other technology that Aurora HealthCare has provided is “myAurora” which is an online patient resource. myAurora enhances home-based mental health care treatment since it provides the patient, their families and caregivers health information concerning the patient. The information can be used during scheduling appointment, viewing testing results, reminding the patient the time to take medicines, renew prescriptions, and used for communication with care teams.
Clinical and Operational Excellence
This is the second section of Aurora’s strategy which comprises both clinical and non-clinical components. The clinical component of Aurora strategy incorporates the development and implementation of mental health care clinical standards throughout sections that Aurora HealthCare has integrated. The clinical strategy is meant to create more efficient processes that will see the productivity in clinical operations improving and more mental disorder patients accessing medication easily.
Non-Clinical component of the Aurora HealthCare clinical and operational excellence strategy incorporates initiatives that are able to provide efficiency and effectiveness in core support functions. The initiatives include cost control and revenue cycle improvement. The cost control is a fixed cost reduction plan that would be applied throughout different sections and locations that Aurora HealthCare operates in order to identify how the implementation of health care process can be done with minimum cost. The project provided results as the organization started to incorporate technology into the health care processes as a way of reducing costs. The technologies were improved to incorporate diagnostic equipment utilization and others that saw the organization able to control the costs of health care delivery processes. The second initiative of non-clinical component is the revenue cycle improvement. The revenue cycle improvement focused on improving the revenue captures, billing accuracy, and patient experience. The redesign process was to ensure there was an improvement in documentation in terms of accuracy, competence, and timeliness which would improve the performance of management hence improving the patient experience.
SWOT ANALYSIS
The SWOT analysis of Aurora Health Care organization includes:
Strength
The strengths that Aurora Health Care organization holds that make it have a competitive edge include leadership, information technology, quality and cost, employed and closely aligned physicians, and integrated systems. The leadership system in Aurora Health Care organization has provided the organization to provide a wide range of health care in several service areas such as Sheboygan and Greater Milwaukee South. The wide area coverage of the organization has enabled it to be an attractive site to different players and other organizations entering into long-term managed contracts, enable it to increase its recruit of best physicians and other health care personnel, and assume risk-based payments making it the leader in the community-based healthcare provision. Information technology has been well incorporated in the Aurora hospitals and clinics such as electronic health record and myAurora. The technologies play a major role in enhancing operational efficiency and reducing cos which gives the organization a positive effect in terms of operating income and offers the organization a good position for value-based purchasing. When it comes quality and cost-effective, Aurora was established as the lowest cost user with the highest number of health care quality delivery in southeastern Wisconsin in 2014 (Aurora Health Care, Inc. and Affiliates, n.d). This demonstrated how the organization was to against most health care providers across the country which gave Aurora a good location on the national health care provision chart. The other strength of Aurora is that it has enough qualified physicians with the current number of physicians being approximately 1,500 with a total staff of 3,100 with the inclusion of closely aligned physicians. Lastly, Aurora has an integrated system which enables it to provide a broad spectrum of care throughout an established network that consists of physicians, complementary outpatient services, acute care hospitals, home-based health services, pharmaceuticals, and psychiatric hospitals.
Weakness
The weakness of Aurora includes varied business practices due to the application of best practices which could be fragmented. The mission statement of Aurora Health Care does not specifically address one thing which makes some part of it to be less understood in outlying areas. The other weakness of Aurora Health Care is that it has placed itself in a more centralized position that it encounters respond delays in processes that its services are required somewhere else as an emergency. Since Aurora Health Care systems interface is geographically spread, this could cause misalignment between divisional functions; the system interface malfunction might cause a poor integration of patient needs in case the person involved is the physicians, nurses, or any other health provider. The malfunction may also cause errors n data entry, knowledge oversight, knowledge purging, and selective encoding which will affect the operational processes of different most functions such as accessing the patients’ information for treatment.
Opportunities
The opportunities that Aurora Health Care can utilize include its position as a systematic innovator which provides the organization with opportunities to develop new and better practices. The organization has the ability to recognize opportunities as soon as they arise. The organization has opportunities for knowledge access which improves the organization ability to improve patients’ reviews, financial and its employees and its competitor’s employees. Knowledge access also enhances the leadership role of the organization in active data review, and it also improves major information technology aspects of the organization such as data collection, data analysis, data review, communications, and actions. There are opportunities within the industry to improve customer services through individualized and personalized care that would allow the patient to heal faster as it understands the need of the patient.
Treats
The biggest threat to Aurora Health Care is a completion from other care-providers which is growing intense and threatens to decrease market share in a few years to come. There are also developments of technologies which are also integrated by the organization competitors which could be a serious threat for both parties in the industry in medium long term future.
MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS
The effective of Aurora Health Care Mental health program is measured in four different ways: Structure measures, process measure, outcome measure, and patient experience. Structure measure of the program involves the evaluation of health care infrastructure settings. The structure evaluation includes the staff available at a facility and the resources available for conducting the health services (Morris & Bailey, 2014). The effectiveness of the mental health program will depend on how well Aurora Health Care have structured their capacity in providing mental health care services such as the availability of electronic health care record system. Process effective measure of the mental health care program involves the evaluation of how consistent the health care providers provide mental health programs as per recommended guidelines of care.
The process measure in mental health care mostly involves prevention of mental patients from receiving other diseases such as chronic disease (Morris & Bailey, 2014). Out measure of the effectiveness of the mental health program evaluates the health of the patient as the result of the care provided. Outcome measure mainly focuses on the intended or unintended effects that the care has had on the patient’s health, function, and health status. Lastly, the mental health program effectiveness is measured by patient experience. Patient experience measure involves the feedbacks provided by patients about their experience at health care. It focuses on interpersonal aspects of care such as clarity and accessibility of information provided by health care providers, whether physicians provide patients with test results, and how fast a patient can get an appointment for care needed urgently.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The recommendations that can be provided based on the assessment of the paper include technology being used more in better access to mental health information and for ordinations of service delivery. Campaigns to encourage Americans to gain understanding about mental health should be conducted which will reduce stigma hence improve health service delivery. The other recommendation is that early mental health screening, assessment, referral to services should be made a common practice within the society. In conclusion, the successful strategy of Aurora Health Care Mental health program can be achieved through proper evaluation, training, teamwork, and quality of treatment by all health providers.
References
Aurora Mental Health Center, Inc. (2019). Services within Primary Care Settings . Retrieved from https://www.aumhc.org/programs-services/specialized-services/services-within-primary-care-settings/
Aurora Health Alliance. (n.d). Our Vision, Mission, and Guiding Principles . Retrieved from https://www.aurorahealthalliance.org/front-page/about-us/our-vision-mission-and-guiding-principles/
Aurora Health Care, Inc. and Affiliates. (n.d). Aurora annual report 2014 . Retrieved from https://www.aurorahealthcare.org/-/media/aurorahealthcareorg/documents/annual-report/aurora-annual-report-2014-final.pdf?la=en
Barry, C. (2004). Trends in Mental Health Care. Issue Brief . Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c061/ba1c6a5bdb0e1a023b74232dc2984ffe9cf3.pdf
Comparably. (2019). Aurora Health Care Mission, Vision & Values . Retrieved from https://www.comparably.com/companies/aurora-health-care/mission
Mechanic, D. (1998). Emerging Trends In Mental Health Policy And Practice. HEALTH AFFAIRS . Vol. 17, No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.17.6.82
Morris, C. & Bailey, K. (2014). Measuring Health Care Quality: An Overview of Quality Measures. FAMILIESUSA . Retrieved from https://familiesusa.org/sites/default/files/product_documents/HSI%20Quality%20Measurement_Brief_final_web.pdf
