PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Geographic differences in telehealth found among mental health clinics

Fewer than half of treatment facilities in Mississippi and South Carolina offer telehealth

2024-02-02
(Press-News.org) Telehealth availability for mental health care varies significantly across states -- from less than half of treatment facilities contacted in states like Mississippi and South Carolina to every facility contacted in states like Maine and Oregon, according to a new RAND study.

 

Researchers found there were differences in services offered depending on whether a mental health treatment facility was located in in a rural or metropolitan area.

 

The types of services offered -- and the types of telehealth modalities available -- also varied widely among clinics, with roughly one in four clinics not offering virtual medication management and about one in three not offering virtual diagnostic services.

 

The results are from a “secret shopper” study where researchers phoned nearly 2,000 clinics nationally and sought to make telehealth appointments for various mental health conditions posing as patients with different perceived race and ethnicities. The findings are published in the journal JAMA Health Forum.

 

“We found considerable variation in the types of services telehealth offered by mental health clinics across the U.S.,” said Jonathan Cantor, the study’s lead author and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “On the positive side, we observed no significant differences in the availability of telehealth services based on the caller’s stated mental health condition or perceived race and ethnicity.”

 

The use of telehealth in the United States expanded considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic. While telehealth use has returned to near pre-pandemic levels in most fields of medicine, it remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels in mental health care.

 

While studies have examined use of telehealth throughout the pandemic, there is little known about the availability and composition of mental health telehealth services. This includes ease of access to appointments, mental health conditions treated, types of telehealth services offered, and accepted types of insurance for payment.

 

“Understanding the availability of telehealth is important for informing policies that maximize the potential benefits of telehealth for mental health care,” Cantor said. 

 

RAND researchers telephoned a nationally representative sample of 1,938 outpatient mental health treatment facilities that treat adults between December 2022 and March 2023 using a standardized client script to inquire about current facility telehealth availability. Despite repeated calls to some clinics, researchers could reach someone at only 1,404 clinics.

 

“We tried to replicate the experience of a typical client seeking specialty care from a mental health treatment facility in the U.S,” Cantor said. “The fact that we could not reach anyone at one in five facilities suggests that many people may have trouble reaching a clinic to inquire about mental health care.”

 

Of the facilities successfully contacted, 87% were accepting new patients and 80% reported that they were currently offering telehealth services. The median wait time for a telehealth appointment was just over two weeks, with significant geographic variation ranging from more than two months at mental health clinics in Maine to four days at clinics in North Carolina.

 

About half of current telehealth providers reported that telehealth was available only via video appointments, 5% reported that they only used audio appointments, and 47% used both video and phone appointments.

 

Among current telehealth providers, 97% said they offered counseling services, 77% offered  medication management and 69% offered diagnostic services via telehealth. Responses did not differ significantly according to the stated clinical condition of the caller.

 

Private facilities were nearly twice as likely to offer telehealth services compared to public facilities. In addition, private for-profit facilities were much less likely to offer medication management via telehealth compared to public facilities, but were more than twice as likely to offer diagnostic services.

 

“This may be because public and private facilities tend to serve different populations,” Cantor said.

 

Support for the study was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health. Other authors of the study are Megan S. Schuler Samantha Matthews, Aaron Kofner, Joshua Breslau and Ryan K. McBain.

 

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries.

 

####

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Changes in health care access and preventive health screenings by race and ethnicity

2024-02-02
About The Study: The results of this study of 89,000 adults suggest that wellness visits and preventive health screenings in the U.S. have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Screening rates for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose, and common cancers were lower in 2021 versus 2019, and varied across racial and ethnic groups, with Asian adults experiencing the most pronounced declines. These findings support the need for public health efforts to increase the use of preventive health screenings among eligible adults.  Authors: Rishi K. Wadhera, ...

New therapeutic strategy for metastatic prostate cancer patients resistant to standard treatment

New therapeutic strategy for metastatic prostate cancer patients resistant to standard treatment
2024-02-02
A team of researchers from the Badalona Applied Research Group in Oncology (B·ARGO) and the Urologic Tumours Unit of the Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO) and the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) have found a new therapeutic strategy for patients with a specific subtype of metastatic prostate cancer resistant to standard chemotherapy treatment with docetaxel. In this study, published in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, they propose a new treatment based on a combination of kinase inhibitors in patients who inevitably stop responding to docetaxel. The team found that resistance to this drug is associated with the hyperactivation ...

Audiogene, the first clinical trial in France for a gene therapy to treat hearing loss in children

2024-02-02
The aim of this clinical trial, which has just received approval in France, is to assess the safety and efficacy of a new gene therapy drug in children aged between 6 and 31 months with profound hearing loss. Audiogene was developed by a French consortium composed of teams from the Hearing Institute, an Institut Pasteur research center; the ENT Department and Pediatric Audiology Research Center at Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital (AP-HP); Sensorion and Fondation Pour l'Audition. The trial has also been submitted to other European countries and is currently undergoing assessment. Audiogene is the first clinical trial in France to test a gene therapy drug, SENS-501, ...

Vaccine targeting KRAS in pancreatic and colorectal cancer shows promise

Vaccine targeting KRAS in pancreatic and colorectal cancer shows promise
2024-02-02
A new vaccine shows encouraging early results as a potential off-the-shelf treatment for certain patients with pancreatic or colorectal cancer, according to a study co-led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). The vaccine targets tumors with mutations (or changes) in the KRAS gene, a driving force in many cancers. This cancer vaccine is different from another type of pancreatic cancer vaccine, which is custom-made for each patient using messenger RNA (mRNA). Both are therapeutic vaccines given after surgery ...

A physical qubit with built-in error correction

A physical qubit with built-in error correction
2024-02-02
There has been significant progress in the field of quantum computing. Big global players, such as Google and IBM, are already offering cloud-based quantum computing services. However, quantum computers cannot yet help with problems that occur when standard computers reach the limits of their capacities because the availability of qubits or quantum bits, i.e., the basic units of quantum information, is still insufficient. One of the reasons for this is that bare qubits are not of immediate use for running a quantum algorithm. While the binary bits of customary computers store information in the form of fixed values of either 0 or 1, qubits can represent 0 and ...

Biodegradable sensor monitors levels of pesticides via direct contact with surface of fruit and vegetables

Biodegradable sensor monitors levels of pesticides via direct contact with surface of fruit and vegetables
2024-02-02
Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) in Brazil have developed a sustainable sensor that can be placed directly on the surface of a vegetable or fruit to detect the presence of pesticides. Known for this reason as “plant-wearable”, it is made of cellulose acetate, a material derived from wood pulp. The device has the potential to help assure food safety in a world that increasingly suffers from a shortage of food and the environmental and health problems caused ...

Paper: Multistate foodborne illness outbreaks impact restaurant stock price, public perception

Paper: Multistate foodborne illness outbreaks impact restaurant stock price, public perception
2024-02-02
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — As demand for food from restaurants soars in the U.S., so does the importance in understanding the impacts of foodborne illness outbreaks. A new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert in food marketing and food policy finds that outbreaks spanning multiple states bring swift financial losses, increased media attention and a public-relations hit that makes smaller outbreaks more financially damaging.  In the U.S., more than 60% of foodborne illness outbreaks occur at restaurants, and the vast majority of those outbreaks are confined ...

Identifying genomics markers to predict radiation sensitivity

2024-02-02
As the effectiveness of radiotherapy varies greatly between tumours, finding gene signatures to predict the radiation response could better guide the clinicians to personalize treatment plans. Professor Venkata Manem, affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval and the Centre de recherche CHU de Québec - Université Laval, has made a promising step to advance pre-clinical research in the field of precision radiation oncology. Currently, doctors use a “one-size-fits-all” paradigm for radiotherapy, with a given dose and frequency ...

Turban style and thickness affects head injury risk in Sikh cyclists

2024-02-02
Sudden impacts or jolts to the head can cause skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). TBIs can cause bleeding, unconsciousness, and potential changes to the brain leading to memory loss, mood and personality changes and lack of concentration - sometimes many years after the initial injury.    However, very little research has been done to ascertain the extent and mechanism by which turbans might mitigate impacts to the head during cycling incidents.    Now, researchers from Imperial and the Sikh Scientists Network have studied the performance of turban styles ...

Scientists successfully simulate protein complex that initiates fertilization

Scientists successfully simulate protein complex that initiates fertilization
2024-02-02
Who hasn't seen it before: the view through the microscope in which a sperm penetrates an egg cell and fertilises it. This fundamental step in procreation happens dynamically and seemingly without problems. However, if you zoom in on the processes that take place during fertilisation at a molecular level, it becomes highly complex and it is thus not surprising that 15 percent of couples worldwide struggle to conceive. No microscope, however modern, can illuminate the countless interactions between the proteins involved. Therefore, the exact trigger for the fertilisation process and the molecular events that transpire just before the fusion of the sperm and egg have ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Osteoporosis treatment benefits people older than 80

Consuming more protein may protect patients taking anti-obesity drug from muscle loss

Thyroid treatment may improve gut health in people with hypothyroidism

Combination of obesity medication tirzepatide and menopause hormone therapy fuels weight loss

High blood sugar may have a negative impact on men’s sexual health

Emotional health of parents tied to well-being of children with growth hormone deficiency

Oxytocin may reduce mood changes in women with disrupted sleep

Mouse study finds tirzepatide slowed obesity-associated breast cancer growth

CMD-OPT model enables the discovery of a potent and selective RIPK2 inhibitor as preclinical candidate for the treatment of acute liver injury

Melatonin receptor 1a alleviates sleep fragmentation-aggravated testicular injury in T2DM by suppression of TAB1/TAK1 complex through FGFR1

Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals Shen-Bai-Jie-Du decoction retards colorectal tumorigenesis by regulating the TMEM131–TNF signaling pathway-mediated differentiation of immunosuppressive dendritic ce

Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B Volume 15, Issue 7 Publishes

New research expands laser technology

Targeted radiation offers promise in patients with metastasized small cell lung cancer to the brain

A high clinically translatable strategy to anti-aging using hyaluronic acid and silk fibroin co-crosslinked hydrogels as dermal regenerative fillers

Mount Sinai researchers uncover differences in how males and females change their mind when reflecting on past mistakes

CTE and normal aging are difficult to distinguish, new study finds

Molecular arms race: How the genome defends itself against internal enemies

Tiny chip speeds up antibody mapping for faster vaccine design

KTU experts reveal why cultural heritage is important for community unity

More misfolded proteins than previously known may contribute to Alzheimer’s and dementia

“Too much going on”: Autistic adults overwhelmed by non-verbal social cues

What’s driving America’s deep freezes in a warming world?

A key role of brain protein in learning and memory is deciphered by scientists

Heart attacks don’t follow a Hollywood script

Erin M. Schuman wins 2026 Nakasone Award for discovery on neural synapse function and change during formation of memories

Global ocean analysis could replace costly in-situ sound speed profiles in seafloor positioning, study finds

Power in numbers: Small group professional coaching reduces rates of physician burnout by nearly 30%

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage: A comprehensive review of CCUS-EOR

New high-temperature stable dispersed particle gel for enhanced profile control in CCUS applications

[Press-News.org] Geographic differences in telehealth found among mental health clinics
Fewer than half of treatment facilities in Mississippi and South Carolina offer telehealth