Scott John, Yellowlees Peter, Becker Daniel F, Chen Christopher
Department of Medicine, Allergy and Infectious Diseases, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, University of California Davis, Sacramento, California, USA.
Telemed Rep. 2023 Jul 11;4(1):174-179. doi: 10.1089/tmr.2023.0016. eCollection 2023.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans experienced new or worsened mental health conditions. Concurrently, much care switched from in-person to virtual care, highlighting the value of virtual care but also some of the underlying challenges.
This paper explores one such challenge, the separation of mental health care from physical health care, and a potential solution, collaborative care. It is a team-based approach linking psychiatrists to primary care providers that can help break down the silos of care created through reimbursement models.
In this context of collaborative care, high quality virtual care further bridges the divide between physical and mental health care. Asynchronous virtual care for mental and behavioral health is an innovation that can create efficiencies while still supporting collaborative care.
The barriers and weaknesses of using virtual care exclusively for mental and behavioral health are discussed, as well as examples of policy changes which can improve mental health care through collaborative virtual care.
在新冠疫情期间，许多美国人经历了新的心理健康问题或既有问题恶化。与此同时，许多医疗服务从面对面转为虚拟医疗，这凸显了虚拟医疗的价值，但也带来了一些潜在挑战。
本文探讨了其中一个挑战，即精神卫生保健与身体健康保健的分离，以及一种潜在的解决方案——协作式医疗。这是一种基于团队的方法，将精神科医生与初级保健提供者联系起来，有助于打破因报销模式而形成的医疗孤岛。
在这种协作式医疗的背景下，高质量的虚拟医疗进一步弥合了身心健康护理之间的差距。针对精神和行为健康的异步虚拟医疗是一项创新，它可以提高效率，同时仍支持协作式医疗。
文中讨论了仅将虚拟医疗用于精神和行为健康的障碍和弱点，以及通过协作式虚拟医疗改善精神卫生保健的政策变化示例。
