NeuroFlow, a behavioral health tech company, has launched a suite of analytics tools to help payers and providers understand population risk.
BHIQ is a standalone product built on the analytics work NeuroFlow has already routinely been doing for years. It leverages existing data, like historical EHR, claims and pharma data, to predict the behavioral health needs of a population or a patient. It also helps organizations understand the efficacy of their interventions. NeuroFlow piloted BHIQ with a number of partners including commercial payers, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans and ACOs.
“This certainly is not meant to be a replacement to a diagnostic tool, and it’s not meant to diagnose issues,” NeuroFlow CEO Chris Molaro told Fierce Healthcare. “It’s more of a compass to help point them in the right direction and give them insight into where there may be risk—and then stratify that risk.”
BHIQ is meant to complement NeuroFlow’s other offerings, though it can be purchased separately. Compared to the company’s product for measurement-based care, which draws on patient-reported outcomes questionnaires, BHIQ does not require patients to download an app or respond to surveys. This means organizations have another pathway for data analysis.
NeuroFlow trains its models on clinical data, using PHQ-9 scores to identify patients with depression and label training data accordingly. "When we validate our models by comparing their predictions against actual PHQ-9 scores in our test population, we achieve sensitivity of 88% or higher," Jeremy Kreyling, SVP of healthcare informatics at NeuroFlow, said. "This means our models correctly identify at least 88% of patients who score ≥10 on the PHQ-9, using only routine clinical data."
Still, organizations will get the most value out of using the full range of NeuroFlow’s products, not just one or the other. “You get the most power and the most ROI when you can combine those two things, because neither data source is perfect,” Molaro explained. Payers typically analyze claims data but may be missing patient-reported outcomes data. NeuroFlow fills the gaps, bringing a behavioral health lens to medical claims that may largely be unrelated to mental healthcare.
After a patient’s need is identified, NeuroFlow’s workflow tools can help coordinate their care. Before BHIQ, customers didn’t have visibility into how that care is delivered or its outcome. Now, BHIQ surfaces those data, which can help providers negotiate higher reimbursement rates. “You now have visibility in terms of the quality and outcomes of that care once it’s coordinated, versus it always was a black box,” Molaro said.
Payers are increasingly recognizing the power of using claims from physical healthcare services to predict behavioral health risk. “That’s one of the most exciting things about where we are today in healthcare,” Molaro noted. Investing in programs to support costly chronic conditions like diabetes is not as valuable without understanding the underlying behavioral health drivers. Depression is linked to poor medication adherence, for instance.
NeuroFlow’s acquisition of Intermountain Health’s behavioral health platform Alluceo earlier this year added proprietary risk models to its arsenal. Alluceo is a team-based care platform designed to integrate mental and behavioral health into primary care. Launched in 2018, it enables team communication, risk and complexity assessments along with the delivery of connected care. NeuroFlow integrated the model into its analytics suite to enhance its risk identification capabilities for patients.
Developed over many years, Intermountain’s risk model approach combines behavioral and medical health assessment data with clinical information to offer a precise picture of patient health risks. The model uses data from multiple sources including patient self-reporting, disease registries, EHRs and claims.