Use the Lifespan^® Integrative Health Platform to improve patient care and rein in healthcare costs

The Lifespan^® platform is designed for medical practices, community clinics, health systems, public health agencies and health plans that wish to implement a more comprehensive, integrative model of care.

An integrative care model is one that not only provides and coordinates medical care, but also identifies and addresses lifestyle behaviors, mental and behavioral health conditions, and social factors that are known contributors to poor patient health. These factors result in increased office and ER visits, as well as hospitalizations, which undermine the cost saving aims of medical home delivery models.

The Lifespan^® platform enhances primary care delivery by identifying patients with these factors, and facilitating interventions to address them. The result is a better integrated, "whole person" medical home model that improves patient wellbeing, and mitigates healthcare costs.

While the Lifespan^® platform is not an EHR, it does facilitate numerous care initiatives not effectively addressed by EHRs. Moreover, Lifespan® can be integrated with most EHR systems, for a more efficient and seamless user experience.

Use the Lifespan^® platform to:

How It Works

The Lifespan^® platform enables a designated medical team member (nurse practitioner, care manager/coordinator, peer specialist, health coach, or third-party community health worker) to conduct in-office, in-home, and remote screenings of patients for a variety of lifestyle behaviors, mental and behavioral health conditions, and social factors which contribute to ill-health.

The platform also facilitates interventions to address these factors. Interventions include referral of patients to internal staff for individual counseling, referral to third party community resource providers, and proactive health coaching conducted on the platform, using a variety of the platform's proprietary coaching tools (see list of coaching tools below).

Screenings and coaching may be conducted in a variety of ways, according to the unique requirements and capabilities of the patient, as follows:

Waiting room screenings- For clinics and other medical practices, screenings may be conducted in the waiting room via a tablet computer, smart phone, or computer kiosk. Waiting room screenings may be facilitated by the designated medical team member, or self-administered by the patient.

In-home screenings- The designated medical team member who conducts in-home visits uses a tablet computer to administer the assessments and surveys to the patient. In-home screenings may be facilitated by the team member, or self-administered by the patient.

Remote screenings- Remote screening of patients may be conducted in two ways:

• By phone, or via the platform's secure video conferencing application, wherein the designated medical team member facilitates the screening in real time; or
• Via a remote prompt sent by the designated medical team member to the patient, wherein the patient self-administers the screening using any type of internet connected device (computer, tablet, or smart phone) directly on the platform’s patient portal, Remote prompts may be sent via email, text message and voice messaging.

Actionable data- The patient's screening responses alert staff to a wide variety of issues that may need ongoing monitoring or follow-on intervention to prevent costly ER visits or hospital readmissions. The screenings will identify key areas of patient health that are known cost drivers. These include:

• functioning, mobility and recovery following hospitalization,
• mental and behavioral health conditions,
• social determinants of health factors,
• substance use/abuse
• wellbeing and life-satisfaction,
• lifestyle behaviors,
• medication adherence
• health literacy, and
• patient satisfaction

Additional Features

Peer Support

The Lifespan^® platform enables you to onboard unlimited numbers of peer support specialists who can use the platform’s interactive tools to provide support, guidance, and goal setting and achievement to their roster of patients.

Coaching & Counseling

The Lifespan^® platform enables you to onboard unlimited numbers of coaches and counselors who can deliver coaching and therapy services using the platform's suite of coaching and counseling tools to effect behavioral change in the areas of substance use, disease management, and nutrition (obesity).

Community Partners

The Lifespan^® platform enables you to form unlimited numbers of digital partnerships with community service organizations (CSOs) in your local community. These include homeless shelters, food banks, women's shelters, etc. Once established, you can use Lifespan^® to make seamless electronic referral of your social-needs patients to any number of your CSO partners. Functionality to support bi-directional referral of social needs individuals from your CSO partners to your facility is also included (capture these individuals as new patients).

Shared Case Management

The Lifespan^® platform contains a robust suite of shared case management features that enables your staff, peers, and CSO partners to work collaboratively with one another to address the patient’s behavioral health and social needs. In particular, the care team partners will be able to selectively share treatment plans, progress notes, and other pertinent information with one another. The result is each partner will have a global view of all services being provided to the patient, as well as the progress being made within each of the partner’s domains. This eliminates the traditional siloed-approach to patient care, and ultimately contributes to better treatment outcomes.

Referral Management

Because referrals are made electronically, it will eliminate the need for phone, fax, email and paper handouts, as well as the missed calls, voicemails, phone tag, and email follow-up that are the bane of manual referral management. Instead the electronic referral functionality of Lifespan^®, coupled with the platform's shared case management features, ensures that the referral loop gets closed, and no patients "fall through the cracks".

SBIRT

The substance use screening modules embedded into the Lifespan^® platform are built on an SBIRT framework (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment). SBIRT is a highly validated, evidenced-based practice that is proven to be effective in identifying levels of risk for alcohol and other substance use, and in delivering the appropriate level of intervention based on risk level.

The Lifespan^® platform uses the AUDIT screener to assess alcohol use, and the ASSIST to assess overall substance use. If a patient screens "at risk" on either of these screening modules, they are prompted through the platform's proprietary "brief intervention". The brief intervention consists of 12 interfaces. Woven through the interfaces are elements of motivational interviewing, "change talk", CBT, and solution-focused strategies.

The turn-key SBIRT component of the platform allows clinics and medical group practices to easily implement a robust SBIRT program, while eliminating the need for staff to be formally trained in SBIRT. Moreover, our brief intervention interfaces deliver an effective, standardized brief intervention every time out. This eliminates the variability inherent in more traditionally administered brief interventions, wherein the efficacy of the intervention can vary wildly, depending upon the SBIRT skillset of the interventionist.

Outcomes tracking

The Lifespan^® platform comes equipped with our proprietary Outcome Tracker tool. The Outcome Tracker uses a "pre-post" methodology to capture client screening data both prior to, and after, coaching or counseling intervention. The improvement delta is then automatically measured and stored. You can view all outcomes data and reports on a client-specific, population-specific, or aggregate basis using date-range filtering. You can opt to use our embedded pre-post screening survey, or have us install your preferred pre-post survey at no additional charge.

Just Imagine

Imagine your counselors, coaches, care coordinators, and peer specialists, working collaboratively with your community's homeless shelters, food banks, women’s shelters, addiction treatment providers, and job training programs to solve life’s most intractable problems on your patients’ behalf. Imagine being able to mitigate suffering, improve quality of life, and restore dignity for your most challenged patients, while also reining in costs. All of this is possible with Lifespan^®

Screeners/Assessments/Modules

The following screeners/assessments/modules are included with the platform:

• 15 BH Modules (Details)

   

  The Behavioral Health Risk Assessment can be used to screen patients for up to 15 behavioral and mental health conditions that are known cost drivers. Responses to the survey questions can alert staff to the need for follow-up or intervention, which may help to mitigate unnecessary office and ER visits or hospital readmissions. NOTE: Assessment of behavioral health is one of the elements included in PCMH recognition. Use of the BHRA may count toward valuable recognition points (Call for details)

   

  The conditions that the Behavioral Health Risk Assessment screens for include the following:

  • Risky Alcohol use
  • Risky Drug use
  • Tobacco use
  • Gambling Addiction
  • Sleep Disorders
    • Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)
    • Insomnia
    • Excessive Sleepiness
    • Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)
    • Narcolepsy
  • Sex Addiction
  • Eating Disorders
    • Anorexia Nervosa
    • Bulimia Nervosa
    • Binge Eating
  • Depression
  • Postpartum Depression
  • Bi-polar Disorder
  • Anxiety
  • Panic Disorder
  • Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
    • Military Version
    • Civilian Version
  • Anger Disorder
  • Intimate Partner Violence (Domestic abuse)

   

• Social Determinants of Health Survey* (Details)

   

  Our proprietary SDH survey consists of 16 items that comprise the most common SDH factors. Patients who have multiple SDH factors are known to drive costs as much as three times that of patients who do not have any SDH factors. These costs manifest in increased office and ER visits and hospitalizations.

  The factors included in the SDH survey include unemployment, income insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, exposure to toxic air, contaminated drinking water, or environmental toxins, unhealthy living or working conditions, discrimination, workplace harassment, intimate partner violence, childhood trauma, and more.

  Responses to the survey questions can alert staff to the need for follow-up or intervention, which may help to mitigate unnecessary office and ER visits or hospital readmissions

  NOTE: Assessing patients for SDH is one of the elements included in PCMH recognition. Accordingly, use of the platform’s SDH survey may count toward valuable PCMH recognition points (Call for details)

   

• ACEs (Pediatric, Adolescent, Adult)
• Resilience Checkup (Details)

   

  The Resilience Checkup allows both the patient and health coach to assess the patient’s level of resilience, and to identify areas where resilience-building may be needed (Call for details)

   

• Wellbeing Checkup (Details)

   

  The Wellbeing Checkup is a 10 item survey that measures life satisfaction and general wellbeing across 10 life-dimensions. Responses to the survey questions can alert staff to the need for follow-up or intervention, which may help to mitigate unnecessary office and ER visits or hospital readmissions

   

• Recovery Checkup (Details)

   

  The Recovery Checkup survey is a 2-part survey for use with MAT (medically-assisted treatment) patients. This survey is a critical component to supporting MAT patients in achieving sustained recovery for substance use disorder (SUD) Responses to the survey questions can alert staff to the need for follow-up or intervention, which may help to mitigate unnecessary office and ER visits or hospital readmissions (Call for details)

   

• Aftercare Checkup (Details)

   

  The Aftercare Checkup survey tool is for those patients who have recently been discharged from the ER or hospital. The basic Aftercare Survey measures functioning, mobility and recovery. However, customized surveys can be embedded that are more specifically focused on a particular illness or injury that has been treated, or a type of surgery performed. Responses to the survey questions can alert staff to the need for follow-up or intervention, which may help to mitigate unnecessary office and ER visits or hospital readmissions (Call for details)

   

Coaching/Behavioral Change Tools

• Change Agent (Details)

   

  ChangeAgent is our proprietary interactive goal setting tool that uses Motivational Interviewing to help patients identify motivations, strengths, and barriers for achieving behavior change. All goals can be shared with your Health Coach or the Counselor for follow-on discussion

   

• Task Tracker (Details)

   

  The Task Tracker tool allows patients to specify the steps needed to achieve the behavior change goals they set using the ChangeAgent tool. All Task Tracker steps can be shared with your Health Coach or the Counselor for follow-on discussion

   

• Vision Board (Details)

   

  Vision Board allows patients to upload photographs and images that help them visualize the steps needed to achieve the behavior change goals they set using the ChangeAgent and Task Tracker tools. All Vision Board content can be shared with your Health Coach or the Counselor for follow-on discussion

   

• Reframer (Details)

   

  Our proprietary Re-framing Tool employs Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles to enable patients to take their unhelpful thoughts and feelings and re-frame them into neutral or positive ones. Re-framing results can be shared with the health coach for follow on discussion. This is an essential tool for teaching patients the basics of cognitive re-framing (Call for details)

   

• Secure video conferencing (requires payment of a separate fee-call for details)

Screening Options

• Staff facilitated or patient self-administered screenings
• On premises screening (waiting room)
• Remote prompting/screening (patient self-administered from home)
• Screening/re-screening reminders

Analytics/Outcomes/Reporting

• Screening analytics
• SDoH analytics
• Outcomes tracking
• Export to PDF
• Export to CSV
• Online reporting tool/li>

Platform flexibility

• Customizable
• Embeddable
• EHR Integratable

Support and Branding

• Free online training
• Technical support via phone or email
• Minimal staff time needed to administer
• Branding of the platform with your logo, contact info, etc. is included

Grant eligibility

The platform may be eligible for a wide variety of grant opportunities, including health technology grants, and grants focused on behavioral health integration, social determinants of health, SBIRT implementation, substance use screening, depression screening, MAT, PCMH, service area competition, and more (Call for details)

Compliance

• HIPAA
• 42 CFR Part 2 compliant
• Business Associate Agreement

For more information, or to arrange a live demo of the Lifespan^® platform via GoTo Meeting, call:

800-717-0955