Reimagining Innovation in Healthcare: The Life-Saving Power of Simple Interventions
I worry that our definition of innovation in healthcare is becoming too narrow.
It doesn’t always involve coding or a new technology.
In fact, we are likely missing out on opportunities to dramatically improve patient outcomes by overlooking the boring ideas.
Until the early 2000’s, mental health clinicians relied on the “no-suicide contract” before sending individuals home following a crisis.
Since that approach didn’t work well, Drs. Barbara Stanley and Gregory K. Brown developed the Safety Planning Intervention (SPI) in 2008.
The SPI is a brief (<5 minutes) structured conversation based on principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The intervention is simple, elegant and effective.
The conversation doesn’t have to be led by a psychiatrist or licensed therapist. Anyone in a clinical setting can be trained to administer the SPI.
The SPI is an unsexy, scalable and effective mental health intervention that saves lives.
A new article in Psychiatric Services shows that completing the SPI in the ED can lower the risk of ED readmission by nearly 50% for patients who had no mental health services in the month before the crisis visit.
SPI’s are not universally administered to patients leaving the ED following a mental health crisis. Decision makers at all hospitals should make this a requirement.
This is low-cost, high-yield value based care.
