SunCloud Health was proud to be a sponsor at the 41st Annual NIEAPA Conference in Oak Brook, IL.
The impact of mental health on a company’s bottom line has been widely publicized yet continues to go unaddressed. It’s the elephant in the board room no one wants to talk about. According to Forbes, mental health and substance use cost businesses between $80 and $100 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Another study showed that serious mental illness costs America up to $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year, while depression is thought to count for up to 400 million lost work days annually.
SunCloud believes putting mental health issues at the top of a company’s priority list is vital. Why? “Because it is not only good for employees, it’s good for business,” said David Newton, MBA, Director of Operations and Outcomes Measurement. “By some measurements, total savings of effective mental health and addiction treatment can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1! We collect a lot of outcome data here at SunCloud Health. We want to know what we are doing well and what we are not doing as well so we can improve where we can and exit where we are not useful. We use the data as an integral part of this continuous improvement process”, said Newton.
In the coming months, SunCloud will be meeting with EAPs and heads of local Chicago companies to share their outcomes data with the hopes of playing an integral role in improving what Newton sees as a desperately needed and incredibly broken system of mental health and addiction delivery services. “Much of this for me is focused on moving the needle away from the Wild Wild West where nobody really knows who does what or how well they do it, and where providers get paid based solely on quantity of services, to a more transparent system where providers get paid based on the value they are providing their patients, and where value is a function of outcomes that matter to patients per dollar spent. In the current fee for service environment interests between patient, payer and provider are not aligned and patients are suffering as a result. Once we focus on and share the actual value many of us are currently creating for our patients, interests will align, and we will all benefit!”
Read More about SunCloud Health’s Patient Satisfaction Survey and outcomes initiative.
