Medicaid Beneficiaries With Mental Illness Treated Through An Outpatient Telepsychiatry Clinic Had 38% Lower Inpatient Hospitalization Rates

Medicaid consumers using an outpatient psychiatry clinic’s services had a 38.0% lower rate of hospitalizations (274.3 hospitalizations per 1,000 consumers) than those not using such services (442.6 hospitalizations per 1,000 consumers), according to a recent study. Both groups had similar per-member per-month (PMPM) costs to Medicaid across the categories analyzed. The researchers said the findings suggest that outpatient telepsychiatry care could play an important role in reducing hospital admissions.

The researchers analyzed data for 5,372 Montana Medicaid beneficiaries who received services from Frontier Psychiatry using Humbi AI’s national Medicaid analytics . . .