In our newest video interview, Faith Best, NeuroFlow’s Clinical Services Manager, helps answer key questions on how the right care at the right time can offer support to those that need it the most
What are some of the key challenges providers face for assessment and management of suicidal patients?
If you were to go to the doctor today, you might be asked to fill out a paper form that asks you about your depression, or a nurse might ask you screening questions to screen you for suicide risk, but gathering that information is inconsistent, it’s challenging in that setting, and the tracking of that information is also hard for primary care doctors to maintain.
How can technology like NeuroFlow help close these gaps in care?
What’s great is that a patient can complete the assessment on the app, in their home, wherever they are most comfortable, which gives them the time and the space to answer those questions accurately. And on the provider side, the technology enables them to gather that information easily, to track that information, and to track it over time, because suicide risk can get greater or less over time, and it’s really important to see how your patient is doing, not just at one point in time, but over the course of their treatment, over the course of their life.
How about liability, isn’t that a huge concern with suicidal patients?
Liability is a huge concern for any healthcare professional, and suicide especially brings up those concerns because it’s really important to make sure that patients are safe. But if you were to go to your doctor and he would stop testing your blood pressure because he was worried that he would be liable for a heart attack that you might have, you would know that that was not good practice. So assessing for suicide risk, especially collecting that information over time and tracking that risk, it allows doctors to know when to respond and when their patient is at most risk. So they actually protect themselves, and most importantly, protect the patient.
Any particular stories about individuals supported by NeuroFlow you can share?
We actually had a woman who had been treated by doctors for years for a chronic illness, but had never been able to disclose that she’d had suicidal thoughts for years. So using the app gave her the opportunity to identify that, and then NeuroFlow was able to respond, and we got her connected to therapy, which was huge for her. She actually said, “This might be a small thing for you, but it’s a big thing for me.”
To learn more about how NeuroFlow is helping support individuals through collaborative, integrated care, visit https://www.neuroflow.com/cocm/
