Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic partnered with a mental health software provider neuroflux last August to mitigate the health care burnout crisis by providing their nurses powered by the Philadelphia-based startup. A year later, partners say more hospitals should implement initiatives like this, as nurses using NeuroFlow saw a quick and positive impact on their mental well-being.
Foundation of the Blue Cross of Independence funded the program, which launched at three Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic hospitals in Pennsylvania: Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia, Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Yeadon, and St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne. The initiative gave more than 1,800 nurses access to the Neuroflow app, which provides self-guided care to maintain good mental health.
About 20% of nurses who were eligible for the program signed up for the app, which is well above the 6% average sign-up rate for similar behavioral health solutions, according to the Trinity and Neuroflow case study. These nurses used the app to get screened for depression, record daily information like sleep patterns and mood scores, journal about their experiences, and access educational content on coping with mental health issues.
NeuroFlow measured the well-being of Trinity Health nurses using the Evaluation of the Well-being Index 5 of the World Health Organization (WHO-5). This brief self-assessment measures a person’s well-being on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 representing the best possible well-being. Using this assessment was chosen “very purposefully,” Matt Miclette, Neuroflow’s vice president of clinical operations, said in an interview.
Miclette, who is also a registered nurse, noted that the standard screening tool for depression is the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ). He said providers know the PHQ like the back of their hand. It’s been used for so long that patients expect these kinds of questions from their primary care providers and know how to answer them so they don’t raise any red flags.
The Neuroflow platform opts for the WHO-5, which uses less clinical language. Miclette said that Neuroflow first discovered that WHO-5 was more effective in detecting mental health problems during the start-up of the company. military programs.
“The WHO-5 is not just a depression scale, it’s actually a well-being scale,” he said. “The difference is that we can actually use this to look at not only if someone has depression, but also if they’re thriving and doing well at work.”
For the Trinity program, 29% of the nurses who took the assessment had scores indicating low well-being. At the end of the nine-month case study, the nurses with the lowest WHO-5 scores significantly improved their well-being scores.
For example, 53% of nurses who scored less than 50 on the WHO-5, a range indicating moodiness or likely depression, experienced a clinically significant improvement of 10 or more points after 90 days. After four to eight months, 79% of nurses who initially scored below 50 improved their scores by 10 points or more.
Informed by nurses’ WHO-5 scores in combination with their user data, Neuroflow also powered personalized interventions for nurses 39 times over nine months. These interventions proactively supported Trinity nurses by triaging them to the appropriate level of care and preventing a potential behavioral health crisis, according to Miclette.
For Miclette, a key reason Trinity nurses liked the Neuroflow app is because it brings flexibility into mental health care. Nurses enjoyed being able to complete wellness activities, such as meditation or guided breathing, in five-minute intervals of their choosing in any setting they wanted.
“Nurses have long shifts, and sometimes the last thing we want to do when we’re done being in the hospital is go back to another health care setting,” she said. “The app provides an opportunity for people to think about their mental wellness outside of the workplace and engage at home.”
Photo: Antonio Guillem, Getty Images
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