CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) has continued to double down on its behavioral health efforts.
In 2022 it announced a slew of new initiatives and digital partnerships aimed at improving mental wellbeing.
For example, in August CVS announced a partnership with telehealth giant Amwell to begin a new virtual primary care offering, which includes on-demand mental health services. The service will be rolled out to fully insured Aetna members, self-insured plan sponsors and CVS Caremark clients in 2023.
CVS has also continued to see growth in its telehealth visits. In 2021 CVS reported 10 million virtual mental health visits.
CVS has also been active in mental health prevention efforts. CVS has set an ambitious goal of reducing suicide attempts for Aetna members by 20% by 2025. It has already made significant strides towards decreasing suicide attempts.
The Woonsocket, RI-based health conglomerate, which includes pharmacy, pharmacy benefits manager, and payer subsidiaries, is now looking to focus on adolescent behavioral health in the future.
Behavioral Health Business sat down with Cara McNulty, president of behavioral health and mental wellbeing at CVS Health, to talk about where the company plans to take its behavioral health efforts.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
BHB: Going into 2023 what are some of CVS’ top priorities for mental health?
McNulty: We, as a health services organization, are committed to treat people’s mental health and physical health collectively. Your head is connected to your heart, your heart is connected to your head and that is the premise we go with.
We will continue to drive that premise and meet people where they’re at on their mental health journey. That means we’re not waiting for people to be in crisis. We are thinking, talking and acting on people’s mental health and physical health, consecutively showing up in the same way.
The third part of this equation is really driving prevention and intervention. So we made a bold goal about a year ago to reduce suicide attempts of the members we serve through Aetna, our insurance arm, by 20% by 2025. In one year in the 18 plus population we’ve reduced that number by 17.5%. The unfortunate side is we continue to see adolescent mental health and wellbeing especially from ages 10 to 24 [declining]. The second leading cause of death is suicide [for this age range].
We are even pushing our goal farther to have a specific adolescent focus.
What are some lessons learned from 2022 when it comes to behavioral health efforts?
Mental health and mental wellbeing happens to all of us. Let’s get up front and proactively talk about mental health and well-being because we need to make it easy and acceptable, and an open conversation if we ever think people are going to ask us for help.
That is especially important in populations whose voices have been quieted or they don’t feel safe to ask for help. You’ll see us really continuing to lean in on those conversations.
I talked about a focus on our adolescent efforts, and that includes specific adolescent outreach programs that impact adolescents and their families. We’re doing some unique partnerships specifically around adolescent suicide prevention with a company called Vita Health and Oui Therapeutics. It’s really focused on interventions that support adolescent prevention and intervention.
In our adult campaign to reduce suicide attempts we use something called the Caring Contacts Program. When someone has been hospitalized for an attempt, we do a whole host of things. One of the things we do is send a simple, caring contact that lets the person know that they’re important and that they’re valued.
We’re deploying that with our adolescent population as well. We really take the lessons we’ve learned, we modify, we course correct.
How do you see value-based care shaping behavioral health in the future?
We are using value-based care and the value-based care construct to really get at access, availability, provider outcomes, and diversity and inclusion.
When we partner with key systems and providers, we’re looking at value-based opportunities that help us with that access because we can see in our data where we are less resourced.
We deploy the use of analytics to say, where do we have gaps, not only in access but how can we ensure there’s availability. How can we continue to lean in and reward providers when they’re delivering quality care that’s driving exceptional outcomes, and addressing the diversity and inclusion needs?
We need to continue to advance what the provider ecosystem looks like. That’s everything from race and ethnicity, to age and gender, and expertise.
We know that it’s not only psychiatrists and psychologists that we need to continue to advance people going into those practices. But it’s the lower levels of care, licensed clinical social workers and coaches that really can help people along their journey to full mental and physical health wellbeing.
Do you see digital continuing to be a disruptor in behavioral health? How does CVS see digital fitting into its larger behavioral health strategy?
We see it as a game changer. Prior to the pandemic, we had about 1% utilization of I’ll say, telephonic and teletherapy support. All these years now into this pandemic, and we serve about 55% of our members via telemedicine.
We use chat therapy. We’ve seen that go up exponentially. In between, whether it’s a telemedicine mental health visit or an in person visit, the ability to have that chat therapy with your provider as a check-in is a nice way to touch base.
We recently did a poll and we looked at what consumers are saying about virtual visit to in-person visit. And 41% of people said they love virtual because they didn’t have to leave their home or their place of work.
The other thing we’re seeing is that all ages and ethnicity are finding the use of digital health and tele-mental health services effective.
How do you see mental health parity efforts shaping behavioral health in the future?
Parity took the conversation from mental health is just as important as physical health to really putting into legislation the policy systems and environmental change framework that everyone had to follow. It couldn’t just be words, it really is action that mental health and physical health have to be equal.
As parity continues to evolve, and it is evolving, companies like CVS, are leaning in to say how can we continue to advance the parity legislation? How can we improve?
We see parity as a safety net and a tool for all healthcare providers and companies to advance outcomes and that’s the best thing we can do for our communities, families and individuals within the community.
Are partnerships a part of CVS’ long-term strategy around building behavioral health offerings? Any examples?
Strategic partnerships are absolutely a part of our strategy and our mental wellbeing ecosystem. But it’s not just about any partner. We are engaging with partners that help us fill gaps in care, drive quality and measurable quality.
It’s not just a general open call for partners. We, as I mentioned earlier, are doing partnerships with companies and providers that help us fill a gap we have, whether that be Vita and Oui Therapeutics to look at how we can continue to address adolescent mental health and wellbeing or Big Health’s [digital therapeutics] Sleepio.
We do an awful lot of partnership with nonprofit organizations that we help and they help us to ensure the communities where we live, and work, and worship, and play have access to appropriate care and support. That might be through efforts like our CVS Health Health Zones, which we have concentrated communities. Its [also] investments, which are all about improving access to health and providing screening.
There has been a lot of discussion around prevention in behavioral health. How do you think about mental health prevention efforts?
I think of all the times we have articles about what we should do to improve our physical health. We should sleep, eat well, exercise and we should have positive relationships. You often don’t hear people talking about what you do to support your mental health well-being.
Your mental health needs the same support and nurturing just as your physical health does. That might be some of the same techniques for example, exercising is good for the endorphins and for producing those positive emotions. It’s also things like getting outside, taking a break from social media, if it is causing you distress or even depression.
It’s also seeking support early by talking with a mental wellbeing coach, and learning ways to calm yourself when you’re getting anxious, or what to do when you start to feel the blues coming on. Or even higher level support. Maybe you have a serious mental illness. So how can you manage that mental illness? Not only with medications, but tools and support systems around you that help you be your best at all times.
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