KeyCare, maker of a virtual care platform built with the Epic EHR, is partnering with virtual psychiatry and therapy platform Array Behavioral Care to allow Array's mental health providers to access patient's health records across the continuum of care in order to optimize individual outcomes for patients based on their needs.

Array is a national virtual behavioral health provider that offers patients access to mental health services across the spectrum of care, from high-acuity patients in the hospital to those in an outpatient setting, to lower-acuity patients in their homes.

KeyCare is an Epic-based EMR and national virtual medical group, focused on primary care, that provides health systems with a network of independent virtual providers working on its platform.

"One of our great missions is to improve access to healthcare for the nation and to do that in coordination with health systems," KeyCare CEO and founder Lyle Berkowitz told MobiHealthNews. 

"We are not building our own behavioral health group, so to be able to serve as a partner and ensure that patients and our clients have easy access to a really mature behavioral health group was super important to us."

Through the partnership, Array's virtual mental healthcare platform has been optimized so that its providers can access patients' medical records available through the Epic system, which allows for coordinated and integrated care across physical and mental health.

"We partnered with Array … so they could benefit from the work we've done, and so our clients and the rest of the healthcare system could benefit from having an online behavioral health group that is working on an optimized version of Epic," Berkowitz said. 

"Optimized both for virtual care in general, but also, in Array's case, optimized for taking care of behavioral health patients online and all that entails, and doing it in a way that coordinates with the 60% to 70% of the health system that's already on Epic."

Dr. Sara Gotheridge, chief medical officer at Array Behavioral Care, emphasized the value of the partnership, stating it allows for integrated care within Array's organization, and for Array's care to be integrated within the larger medical community.

"There really have not been sole behavioral health providers that could find their way and afford an Epic-based solution, but we found a way to do that to get rid of the fragmentation of care and be a virtual health provider," Gotheridge told MobiHealthNews.

"It's really quite profound; it's not done, and it solves a tremendous problem of having a common data platform to integrate care of physical and behavioral health."

Shannon Werb, CEO of Array Behavioral Care, said that a patient experiencing care in the hospital, who needs to be discharged post-acute and needs some behavioral health follow-up, could be directly integrated into Array's capabilities almost automatically as a result of Array being on a common platform.

"Our goals are really tied to how we want to integrate the clinical capabilities from patients that might be in the hospital to patients in the home, and how care is delivered, and then clinically, how we want to make sure we can take care of the complete patient through our ability to now get at physical and mental health information on the patients that we care for," Werb told MobiHealthNews. 

Patients' detailed medical records are now available to Array's providers, including their allergies, medications, laboratory results, and other notes from their physical health provider.

The partners say the offering gives providers a more complete picture of a patient's physical health history and saves patients time not having to relay medical history between providers.  

"What we're looking forward to is not only expanding access, but improving the quality of care, both because of improved data coordination, but also because of the technology that we're layering in that can improve how we measure and take care of patients and over time, how we can improve efficiency and set ourselves up, as behavioral health and other groups move into more value-based care arrangements," Berkowitz said.

"To have a partner like that lets us more holistically take care of patients and do it in a way that we think makes sense, which is in coordination with health systems."