Caring is at the heart of Magellan’s culture. Whether it’s approving grant applications through the Magellan Cares Foundation, utilizing paid volunteer time off (VTO) hours or matching financial gifts, this is continually demonstrated by our associates across the country. Learn more about the Magellan Cares Foundation by visiting our webpage, which includes information about how organizations can apply for grants, or learn more from our associates first-hand in this video.

Every day in the news we hear about the devastating impact of the opioid crisis across the country. While we need to confront this complicated crisis, we also need to examine the larger issue of substance use disorders (SUD) that impact millions of Americans.

This past September, I had the honor to represent Magellan Health at the first meeting of the Substance Use Disorder Treatment Task Force, founded by Shatterproof. The mission of the task force is, “To fundamentally improve substance use disorder treatment in the United States, in terms of both quality and patient outcomes.” It also addresses the underlying cause of our country’s current substance use crisis, and lack of access to quality and evidence-based treatment. The task force has been created to expand access to quality treatment for the estimated 21 million Americans with SUD.

This task force is unique in that it convenes public and private healthcare companies, advocates and former government officials to take the lead in developing a tactical plan with measurable goals for payers to follow and implement. I am proud to be joined by so many colleagues and experts across the industry.

Our first focus is to implement the recommendations outlined in the November 2016 Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. Secondly, we will utilize methods outlined in a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine which recommends the need for a group of government regulators, accrediting organizations, consumer representatives, providers and purchasers to come together to develop a common, continually improving set of quality measures, specifically for mental health and substance use disorders.

The work of this task force aligns nicely with our efforts at Magellan, helping lead individuals to healthy, vibrant lives. Working with individuals with SUD, from both the behavioral health and the pharmacy benefits management perspective, we are in a unique position to help address these issues. I believe we can make significant contributions on this task force and for the benefit of our customers, members and providers with whom we work.

During National Depression Awareness Month, we wanted to take some time to discuss the very normal stress and mental health challenges working families experience as we are increasingly connected to our jobs. As our connectivity to work has grown – between email, texting, chats, phone calls, video conferencing calls, and a myriad of social networking sites – so has the challenge to separate work from our personal lives. Employees are spending an increasing amount of time both at work and thinking about work. Habits such as checking email during a family dinner or ruminating about that email that you’d forgotten to write in bed at night are common experiences for many. Add on top of that a child who’s acting out and a parent who needs a little extra care both physically and financially, and you have a recipe for stress that affects your own health and mindset, as well as potentially relationships with family, friends or colleagues.

Employee assistance programs (EAPs) have been adopted by many employers to reduce the impact of mental health disorders, workplace stress and other work/life issues on workplace productivity. Despite the ubiquity of this employee benefit, which is offered by 97 percent of large employers, utilization hovers around five percent industry-wide. A primary barrier is the stigma of utilizing EAP programs, which were historically grown from occupational substance abuse programs.

While great strides have been made in reducing stigma, a great opportunity lies in changing the premise that stands in the way of employees tapping into services that might help them move forward and find their best self. What if we were to fundamentally remove the premise that there are people with “issues” and people without? The reality is that every employee is faced with their own brand of “juggle,” and stress and anxiety continue to be on the rise as working families live increasingly busy lives.

As Magellan transforms the EAP benefit for modern day workers and their families, we’re driven to provide resources and tools to help people address their mental health challenges before they severely impact their lives and productivity. The pivot lies in helping employees take care of their mental health as a practice of self-improvement and in helping employers position EAP services in their culture of well-being.

There are three essential components to powering this shift in the transformed EAP:

• Clinically-validated online programs and mobile apps that help employees track and change habits and mindsets
• When employees experience a bump in the road, convenient access to a coach or therapist that can fit into their harried day
• Content that inspires, motivates and helps employees feel validated in the normalcy of their stress and feel connected to others tackling similar experiences

Imagine a world where employees give each other a high five for taking some “me” time, leveraging a convenient method of choice, just as they do for someone sticking to their gym routine or running their first 5k. We certainly do!

“We are often asked in interviews what our most memorable experience has been as a pharmacist,” said Marc. “I used to have a go-to story I thought was amazing, but now that story has been replaced.”
Marc Ream
Clinical Pharmacist, Magellan Rx

This month, we’re celebrating our amazing pharmacists and the work they do to impact members at virtually every point along the patient-care continuum. Today we’re sharing a story from clinical pharmacist Marc Ream, who partnered with the commercial pharmacy team to go above and beyond the call of duty for a family in need.

Although he did not know it then, when Marc Ream took a call late on a Friday afternoon, he was about to experience what would become the most rewarding moment in his career as a pharmacist.

The call came from a mother with an urgent request for an oncology drug approval for her 10-year-old daughter, Jane.* Jane, who lives with Leukemia, needed a specific medication that is relatively rare and not easily accessible. The family was leaving on their long-awaited vacation the next day, so they needed the medication that same day. Marc quickly realized that  getting this medication to the member quickly would require collaboration with the prescribing oncologist, as well as with multiple parties including the health plan, account managers, technicians, pharmacists, physicians and the dispensing pharmacy.

Marc quickly went to work, placing a call to the prescribing oncologist to gather a comprehensive history on the young girl, as well as the necessary clinical rationale to make the approval. Typically, once a medication is clinically approved, the pharmacist’s job is complete and the prescription can be filled by a local pharmacy. However, this particular oncology drug was classified as a limited-distribution medication, typically dispensed only through mail-order facilities. Realizing that the family would not have time to wait, Marc contacted a specialty pharmacy in the area to try to come up with a quicker solution.

He reached out to the pharmacy’s lead oncology pharmacist and confirmed that the medication was in stock, and they conferenced in Jane’s physician to place the order.  Marc worked with the oncology pharmacist to schedule delivery of the medication to the family. When they called the mother to tell her the good news, they could hear the emotion and gratitude in her voice. Thanks to the swift and diligent work of many, Jane and her family were off on their dream vacation with this important medication in hand.

Thank you to Marc Ream and the commercial pharmacy team for this empowering story that shows just how passionate and committed we are to leading humanity to healthy, more vibrant lives.

*Details around the specific circumstances of this story have been changed to protect the identities of both Jane (not her real name) and her family.

Magellan’s own CTO, Srini Koushik, was recently featured in Forbes Insights, talking about the benefits of videoconferencing and how it is changing the way that we work at Magellan. In the article, Srini discusses how new technology is improving efficiency while increasing connectedness and effectiveness of teams.

Check Srini’s profile here.

Earlier this year, Srini shared his experiences reimagining Magellan as a digital healthcare company here on the Magellan Health Insights blog. Take a look at his views here.

A study by a team of Magellan researchers, demonstrating the pervasiveness of opioid addiction, was featured on CBS Philly (KYW).

The study, an analysis of medical and pharmacy data from 2009—2012 for 2.5 million people aged 20-64 who were part of a commercial health plan, showed that 48 percent of patients who had stopped using opioids for at least six months went on to use them again.

You can read more about the study by clicking here.

As we observe National Suicide Prevention Week 2017, we sat down with Dr. Shareh Ghani, vice president and medical director at Magellan Healthcare who lead Magellan’s Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative.

Magellan Health Insights: Dr. Ghani, thank you for chatting with us today. Tell us about the work you did with the Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative
 Dr. Shareh Ghani: In some parts of the healthcare community, there is a view that suicide is something ‘that just happens’; that it is unavoidable and acceptable. The Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative sought to change that paradigm. Through our efforts in a public health program, we shifted the viewpoint to one that believes that suicide can be stopped and can be driven to zero.

MHI: You have lead a number of initiatives for Magellan, what was your interest in this particular program?

SG: I have been working in mental health since 1993. From 1993 to 1995, during my residency, I had a lot of experience with suicide prevention research, and again working in community psychiatry. There is a lot of good research on the how of suicide, but I want to understand the why.

MHI: You looked at a lot of data as a part of this initiative. Tell us about that.

SG: We were managing the behavioral health contract for Maricopa County between 2007 and 2012. At the time, Phoenix had the seventh highest suicide rate in the country. The suicide rate for those with mental health issues was even higher.

During that time, we reviewed every case of completed suicide to see what could have been done differently.

MHI: What was the Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative hoping to achieve?

SG: Of course, we were looking to significantly impact suicide rates in Maricopa County. But more than that, we were looking to develop a systematized, data-driven, reproducible model.

Part of that meant preparing the clinical workforce to confidently identify at-risk individuals and improve treatment access and engagement. It also meant incorporating family and community participation to better identify early warning signs, navigate the clinical system, and support members at risk.

Finally, there was the integration of a sustainable and replicable clinical and support model and program tools into an EMR [Electronic Medical Record] to ensure that healthcare providers can, from a single source, identify, manage and plan for zero suicides through the safe management of those at risk.

MHI: And what were the results of the initiative? Was it successful?

SG: The results were highly encouraging. Between 2007 and 2012, there was a 67 percent reduction of the suicide rate for the population. Furthermore, there was a 42 percent decrease in the suicide rate of people with serious mental illness.

MHI: You mentioned earlier that the suicide rate was much higher for those with serious mental illness?

SG: Yes, it is a fact that individuals suffering from severe mental illness are six to 12 times more likely to die from suicide than the general population.

MHI: If you could hope that people would take away one thing from the Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative what would it be?

SG: That employing a rigorous, data-driven, scalable and reproducible population health approach to address suicide prevention, and creating a sustainable ecology of support around the individual and the community, is possible.

The Magellan Driving Suicide to Zero Initiative successfully incorporated population surveillance, analytics, research, early detection, intervention and monitoring to shift the paradigm from crisis mitigation to early prevention of suicide.

Privacy is a funny thing, and peoples’ choices about privacy when technology is involved is often hard to explain. We don’t think twice about letting companies track what we like and don’t; what we search for and when we search; the photos we like and the ones we don’t; our shopping patterns and our wish lists; where we go and when; and now, we welcome full-time listening devices into our homes. I often wonder if these listening devices would find their way into our kitchens if they looked more like a reel-to-reel recording device versus a cute little modern orb with fancy LEDs.

Despite how comfortable we are with technology in some parts of our lives, there seems to be a line that many won’t cross. For some reason, discussing our finances while the orb is listening is okay, but using technology to help us manage our healthcare strikes some people as going too far.

This line is moving, albeit slowly.

There are real challenges in advancing technology in healthcare. But most importantly, we need to allow consumers to choose how they want to see their health information.

Texting is common in healthcare today, but it is inefficient, and often, confusing. Most healthcare-related texts contain either redacted information, such as, “You have not filled AtorXXXXXXXX prescription,” or contain links on which you have to click to take you to another message. Amazon doesn’t make a customer guess at the contents of their message or follow a clunky process to share information, so why do we do it in healthcare?

There are a number of regulations that govern Protected Health Information (PHI), and it’s critical that we take them seriously. After all, we’re talking about very sensitive and private material about diagnoses, medication, diagnostics and other information.

But, with careful planning and execution we can balance what is required of us by law while providing consumers with information that will help make their healthcare journey more efficient and tech-enabled. For example, we were able to craft, on behalf of our clients, end-user agreements that allow us to send texts that look like this:

“Your health is important to [Insert Client Name], please take your cholesterol medication as prescribed.”

The results from this texting pilot were nothing short of amazing. 26 percent of the people who received this message, none of whom were previously following their doctor’s orders, promptly filled the prescription. Interestingly, we saw similar results in every category we piloted. Why? It’s simple: nothing had to be decoded, no incremental steps needed to be taken, no password had to reset, etc. The best part of the pilot? 87 percent of the people who started, stayed in the program.

With pilots like this, we moved the line a smidge.

Texting was one of our first pilots and it was critical to challenging our thinking and finding new ways to solve old problems. The line needs to keep moving forward and we welcome the challenge.