Collective Medical Partners with the South Carolina Hospital Association

Partnership fosters care collaboration for the benefit of behavioral
health patients and those struggling with substance use disorder;
promotes workplace safety for caregivers

SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/SDoH?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#SDoHlt;/agt;–Collective
Medical, delivering the nation’s largest and most effective network
for care collaboration, today announced a partnership with the South
Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA) and an endorsement by SCHA
Solutions—a division of SCHA. This partnership provides care teams in
South Carolina with access to the Collective Network™, providing the
tools needed to identify and better support behavioral health patients,
including those with substance use disorder, in the emergency department
(ED). In addition to supporting care collaboration across care teams,
the partnership will help hospitals prioritize workplace safety for
providers.

Collective is currently partnered with nearly 20 state hospital
associations. Collective’s real-time, risk-adjusted event notification
and care collaboration platform serves all points of care and supports
care teams across emergent, inpatient, post-acute, mental and
behavioral, and ambulatory settings, as well as stakeholders in ACOs and
health plans.

Forty-four
million U.S. adults experience mental illness per year, and the need
for mental health professionals cannot be met by the current supply. The
behavioral health crisis is particularly
challenging in South Carolina where nearly 10 percent of the
population struggles with unmet substance use disorder and other mental
health needs. Coupled with the shortage of psychiatrists and the rise of
undiagnosed and untreated behavioral health patients, patients are left
waiting in the ED until they’re able to be seen by a behavioral health
provider and moved to an appropriate care setting.

The shortage of behavioral health specialists, lack of psychiatric
services in the ED, and care silos are all contributing factors to the
escalating mental health crisis. The Collective Network removes these
care silos by connecting hospitals to other care teams in South Carolina
and across the country. When an at-risk patient presents to the ED, the
Collective Platform pushes a real-time notification to ED physicians
with insights into the patient’s medical history—which may include care
recommendations from community and behavioral health providers.

“We’re dedicated to supporting our 100 member hospitals and health
systems as they improve the quality and safety of patient care,” says
Thornton Kirby, FACHE, President and CEO of SCHA. “Our partnership with
Collective is a testament to that dedication. The solution has been
supporting the integration of behavioral and physical health in states
like Washington, Oregon and California for several years and we’re
excited to see how it can impact patient outcomes in South Carolina.”

Kirby adds, “Workplace safety and security is a huge priority for SCHA,
and we’re excited to provide our members with a tool to protect
themselves and their patients.”

In a recent
poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians, almost half of
polled emergency physicians reported being physically assaulted at work.
Similarly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates
that 75 percent of the 25,000 workplace assaults that occur annually
happen in healthcare and social services settings. These incidents are
typically under-reported.

The Collective Network offers facilities a way to record and share
security and safety events for the protection of care teams and
patients. EDs can document when a patient poses a safety threat to
staff, care providers, other patients in the ED, or themselves.

Collective is currently implemented in 20 states and is proven to
significantly impact the opioid epidemic. For example, Collective
provides the technical support for Washington State’s “ER
is for Emergencies” program. Washington has seen a 24 percent
reduction in opioid prescriptions coming out of the ED since the launch
of the program. Likewise, Mat-Su
Regional Medical Center uses the Collective Platform in combination
with statewide prescribing guidelines. This combination resulted in a 61
percent reduction in opioid scripts written between 2015 to 2017 and a
47 percent reduction in opioids given in the ED.

“We’re honored to partner with SCHA and its members dedicated to fixing
the glaring cracks in our healthcare system,” says Chris Klomp, CEO of
Collective Medical. “We’re so pleased to collaborate with South Carolina
hospitals as they prioritize care coordination as a means to not only
deliver better patient care, but to likewise make the emergency
department a safer place for caregivers.”

Collective is endorsed as a best practice for emergency medicine by the
American College of Emergency Physicians and has been recognized by Inc.
Magazine and by the MountainWest Capital Network as one of Utah’s
fastest growing companies.

Learn more about Collective’s impact at www.collectivemedical.com.

ABOUT COLLECTIVE MEDICAL

Collective Medical empowers care teams to improve patient outcomes by
closing the communication gaps that undermine patient care. With a
nationwide network engaged with every national health plan in the
country, hundreds of hospitals and health systems, and tens of thousands
of providers, Collective’s system-agnostic platform is trusted by care
teams to identify at-risk and complex patients and facilitate actionable
collaboration to make better care decisions and improve outcomes. Based
in Salt Lake City, Collective is proven to streamline transitions of
care, improve coordination across diverse care teams, and reduce
medically unnecessary hospital admissions. Learn more at www.collectivemedical.com
and Twitter,
Facebook,
and LinkedIn.

ABOUT THE SOUTH CAROLINA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

South Carolina Hospital Association is a private, not-for-profit
organization made up of some 100-member hospitals and health systems and
about 900 personal members associated with our institutional members.
The South Carolina Hospital Association was created in 1921 to serve as
the collective voice of the state’s hospital community. The Association
is proud to be a part of the state’s hospital industry, adding value to
efforts to care for the people of South Carolina. By helping to keep
South Carolina’s hospitals healthy, we are helping to keep our state
healthy.

Contacts

For Collective Medical
Kat McDavitt
Chief Marketing Officer
610-392-4726
kat.mcdavitt@collectivemedical.com