The question for health system leaders is not whether to adopt the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), but how to operationalize it at scale, Caroline Carney, MD, CEO of Frisco, Texas-based Magellan Health, told Becker’s.
“The most important part about the collaborative care model is that it’s highly evidence-based, and it’s a proven model,” Dr. Carney said. “It has been proven over and over again in research to increase quality of care, reduce cost of care and promote measurement-informed care.”
Magellan Health launched a pediatric CoCM program that enrolled nearly 8,000 patients, with 84% enrollment after assessment, and more than half stayed engaged through graduation. Forty percent of those graduates achieved clinically significant symptom reduction.
Dr. Carney contrasts that with digital apps, in which she said engagement drops off after 30 days. “The fact that [patients] can get care initiated in very close to real time and stay enrolled and engaged … it’s a huge outcome,” she said.
Scaling does not just mean more patients reached; it must also mean patients are retained long enough to benefit, she said. Magellan tracks scores using digital tools to assess patients in pediatrics. Its technology captures individual progress and clinicwide data trends.
“If someone comes in and I say, ‘How are you today?’ and they say, ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ that doesn’t necessarily mean that their depression is better, they’re sleeping better, their appetite has improved, their zest for life has increased — the kinds of symptoms that we need to measure over time to ensure that the whole of the person is getting better,” Dr. Carney said.
The model requires cultural change in clinics, she said. Once it is embedded, primary care providers become more confident asking about depression and suicidality because they are backed by a care manager and a consulting psychiatrist, she said.
That has leadership implications, she said, such as reducing primary care provider burnout, extending psychiatry capacity and creating training opportunities through daily collaboration.
“It makes the primary care providers more efficient in the work that they’re doing, which is also a huge plus,” Dr. Carney said.
