In September 2005, AstraZeneca and Amerigroup Corporation teamed up and approached
the Center for Mental Healthcare Improvement (CMHI) and Informed Decisions, with
the aim to create a plan-specific Quality Initiative focusing on the optimal use
of behavioral health medications for Amerigroup providers. The ten month project
will represent a Health Economic Study on the part of AstraZeneca, and a pharmacotherapy
Quality Initiative program for Amerigroup and its Provider Network. The goal of
the Quality Initiative is to create an optimal quality of care for a complex-care
patient population by supplying Amerigroup’s Provider Network with best practices
guidelines, resources and tools.
As part of this collaborative effort, CMHI and Informed Decisions will work with
Amerigroup and, through their outreach and dissemination efforts, provide the third
party intervention portion of the project using mail-based and face-to-face academic
detailing. This third party intervention is designed to facilitate continuity of
care between providers, increase adherence and decrease multiple medications prescribed
to patients. Through this Quality Initiative, Amerigroup hopes to illustrate that
improving quality will also reduce healthcare utilization costs.
To learn more about our Behavioral Health projects, please contact us at 800-375-0943
or clinicalservices@id-health.com.
In 2004, the Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative (FBHC) was developed with a
goal of compiling, evaluating, disseminating, and facilitating implementation of
best practice guidelines for the use of mental health medications among Florida
Medicaid beneficiaries. The FBHC maintained a focus on improving the quality of
prescribing practices, reducing expenditures, and effectively ensuring Medicaid
beneficiaries maintain access to mental health medications.
Informed Decisions played an integral role in the FBHC by disseminating best practice
information, as well as providing prescription histories, interactions screenings,
and patient compliance information to participating prescribers at the point of
care. As part of the FBHC, Informed Decisions was charged with implementing medication
management processes, developing consultative mechanisms and models of disease management,
and enhancing the existing Florida Medicaid e-prescribing program to include clinical
guidelines for behavioral health pharmacy management. The FBHC paved the path for
the current Medicaid Drug Therapy Management Program for Behavioral Health (MDTMPBH)
in which Informed Decisions is a collaborative partner.