Behavioral Health Means More Than Mental Health With Premera

  • General News
    Published May 28, 2019

    For self-funded and OptiFlex groups with 51 or more employees

    May is mental health awareness month, which makes now the right time to talk with your clients about the programs Premera offers to help take care of members.

    Behavioral health vs. mental health

    While both terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference. Behavioral health is an umbrella term that encompasses mental health and substance abuse disorders. Behavioral health focuses on the overall physical health of a person, rather than just the mental aspect. One of the greatest issues facing behavioral health, is substance abuse. There are many types of substance abuse, but opioid abuse is one of the more commonly reported.

    Why is this important?

    • Each year, prescription drug overdoses:
      • Kill more than 16,000 Americans
      • Result in 1.2 million visits to an emergency room
    • From 2006 to 2016, diagnoses for opioid use disorder spiked almost five-fold

    One way that Premera is making health care work better is through our Enhanced Controlled Substance (ECSU) program, developed in partnership with Express Scripts. The ECSU program is designed to promote safe and effective prescription drug use.

    Key Benefits

    • Promotes effective prescription drug use to achieve positive patient health outcomes
    • Detects fraudulent behavior and helps employers address potential abuse cases using proactive data mining and comprehensive investigation
    • Reduces risk associated with patients or prescribes through proactive identification of abnormal use or prescribing
    • Helps eliminate waste from the healthcare system by reducing multiple doctor and ER visits, duplicative testing, and overlapping therapies.

    Action you can take

    Let your group clients know about the program and benefits by sharing the copy-and-share message below.

    Copy-and-share message

    It’s widely known that misuse and addiction to opioids is on the rise in the U.S., but did you know that nearly one in three people know someone addicted to opioids?*

    With those statistics, chances are good that your healthcare expenses as a self-funded group are impacted by the opioid crisis. That’s why Premera Blue Cross and Express Scripts** have partnered to offer the Enhanced Controlled Substance Utilization (ECSU) program.

    Here’s how ECSU can benefit your business

    The ECSU program compliments the existing and expanding opioid management efforts already in place at Premera. In addition, the program:

    • Helps manage the total cost of healthcare for businesses by reducing fraud, waste, and abuse of opioids.
    • Provides an expanded capacity to review customer claims patterns through analytics and predictive models to identify members that have the highest risk for opioid use disorder (OUD).
    • Delivers support to your employees who may be at risk for OUD through your Premera healthcare plan.

    Find out more

    Download the ECSU program flyer.

    Reach out to me to if you have questions or want to find out how to add this program to your Premera health plan.

    *American Psychiatric Association Public Opinion Poll, March 2018.

    **Express Scripts is an independent company that provides pharmacy benefit services on behalf of Premera Blue Cross.

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