Individuals newly diagnosed with a mental illness who had at least one outpatient care appointment paid an average of $115 less each month, or $1,380 annually, in medical and pharmacy costs than those without care, a study published Dec. 6 in JAMA Psychiatry found.
Researchers with Evernorth Health collected medical expense data of 203,402 individuals over a 15-month period and 74,683 individuals in a 27-month period. Of the 203,402 participants, 90,093 received at least one session of outpatient therapy and 113,308 had no care.
The monthly medical and pharmacy costs of outpatient therapy patients in the 15-month period were an average of $115 less per month than those with no care, whereas the monthly costs of patients who received care in the 27-month cohort were an average of $73 less per month.