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Patient Planning Services: Filling the Mental Health Void in Cancer Treatment
Cate O’Reilly, Vice President, Patient Planning ServicesPPS’s clientele includes healthcare institutions, cancer centers, hospitals, or private practices that are looking to meet the American College of Surgeons Commission’s accreditation standards on Cancer standards related to distress screening and the Oncology Care Model standard for depression screens.
PPS’ Cancer Support Source® is a screening solution delivered over their SaaS platform, called My Care Report— which can integrate with any EMR or work as a standalone platform. It allows for multiple surveys and assessments to be launched for patients or caregivers at home, in clinics, or offices. A hospital or a cancer center can license the tool and use it prescriptively. Using sophisticated mathematical analyses such as factor analysis, PPS can examine distress in key areas of people’s lives, including emotional concerns, symptom burden and impact, body and healthy lifestyle concerns, health care communication, and relationship concerns. The whole screening takes the patient five to seven minutes via a web-based application, which scores distress metrics, combines resources, and then provides risk subscales to help providers react and create action around the distress scoring. Once the responses are submitted, clinicians or the providers will also immediately receive a clinical report via email or a physical print copy that shows them if the patient is at risk for depression or anxiety.
This revolutionizes the workflow for the distress screening program and provides a better experience for both the patient and provider. The provider can access all the raw data with the click of a button in raw or aggregated formats and then ascertain the patient’s depression/ anxiety risk level. The platform can automate many subsequent consultations—such as referrals to mental health professionals, dieticians, or financial navigators—on a question-by-question basis, based on the patient’s state of mind, all of which can be tracked from the platform by the provider.
Evidently, the MyCare Report platform is a major benefit to tackle the psychosocial issues related to cancer, not just the patients, but for the caregivers as well, who undergo a great deal of distress during that challenging time. Additionally, it helps identify and address social determinants of health in a proactive approach.
“The platform provides a real snapshot or a report card of a patient’s mental health risks and helps clinicians see how the patient is doing from a social and emotional standpoint,” states Cate O’Reilly, Vice President of PPS. Preliminary company’s studies show that after screening with their tool, patients have demonstrated fewer emergency department visits, more utilization of their physician’s office, and a decrease in length of hospital stay.
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The platform provides an accurate snapshot or a report card of a patient’s mental health risks and helps clinicians see how the patient is doing from a social and emotional standpoint
Evidently, the MyCare Report platform is a major benefit to tackle the psychosocial issues related to cancer, not just the patients, but for the caregivers as well, who undergo a great deal of distress during that challenging time. Additionally, it helps identify and address social determinants of health in a proactive approach.
Beyond the conventional patient-caregiver-clinician paradigm, PPS is extending its capabilities to connect with hard-to-reach areas within the community. The company is currently looking to identify partners who can help them reach communities with inequitable access to quality care, such as low-income areas and localities with poor healthcare infrastructures. Here, the PPS tool can help identify some of the barriers to care that may have been previously overlooked in these communities, such as financial toxicity due to cancer.
Building on the success of the MyCare Report platform, PPS is launching a new pediatric screening tool where children can self-report their distress. It will also contain a corresponding parent screener to see how the parent answers/believes the child is experiencing the illness— information that the medical team can then receive.
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Company
Patient Planning Services
Headquarters
Washington, DC
Management
Cate O’Reilly, Vice President, Patient Planning Services
Description
Founded in 2013, PPS is a social enterprise of the Cancer Support Community (CSC), the largest nonprofit employer of oncology mental health professionals in the United States that licenses its state-of-the-art psychosocial technology and programming. They work with patients, healthcare providers, and community organizations to deliver distress screening and other assessments via their digital platform. Their flagship solution, PPS' Cancer Support Source® is a screening solution delivered over their SaaS platform, called My Care Report—which can integrate with any EMR or work as a standalone platform. It allows for multiple surveys and assessments to be launched for patients or caregivers at home, in clinics, or offices. A hospital or a cancer center can license the tool and use it prescriptively.
