DOHC Expands Partnership with Wellth to Support and Improve Outcomes for Behavioral Healthcare Patients
(December 20, 2021 – Palm Springs, CA) Following a successful partnership to improve outcomes for patients with Type 2 diabetes, Desert Oasis Healthcare (DOHC) has announced the expansion of their collaborative program with Wellth to include behavioral health patients, as well as patients with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Treating mental illness and substance use disorder has historically been expensive, costing the U.S. $225 billion in 2019—a 52% increase since 2009. With the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of mental illness have skyrocketed, leading to an industry-wide call for better behavioral health solutions to improve patient care while reducing associated high cost utilization.
The DOHC expansion with Wellth is an extension of a program launched in March 2020 to improve medication adherence and glucometer readings for their non-adherent patients with type 2 diabetes. Within months, members enrolled in the Wellth program showed dramatic improvement in both treatment adherence and overall health, including:
- 95% average daily treatment adherence
- 59% reduction in emergency department utilization
- 74% decrease in per member per month paid claims
This expanded program will enable DOHC to support significantly more of its Medicaid, Medicare, and commercially-enrolled members with behavioral health conditions to improve medication adherence, as well as adherence to other key tasks for individuals with comorbid chronic conditions.
"We look forward to building on the excellent results of our previous collaboration with Wellth. To date, our partnership has helped improve care plan compliance and diabetic control in over 300 patients who had previously been essentially non-compliant in their personal commitment to disease management. Extending Wellth support to our patients with behavioral health conditions and cardiovascular disease will empower them to also take control of their health, including forming better habits and reducing hospitalization and ER visits."
Brian Hodgkins, PharmD and EVP of Clinical Operations at DOHC
Understanding that patients are often impacted by a variety of external factors and stressors that negatively affect their care adherence, Wellth uses empathy-based behavioral economics to drive healthy habits and ongoing engagement with care plans. This includes daily reminders, messages from loved ones, reward incentives and other personalized motivators that fuel more effective engagement. These extrinsic and intrinsic incentives empower patients to enrich their own lives and overall health, with recent data from DOHC showing that over 50% of Wellth members use their incentive reward on groceries and food. Wellth CEO and co-founder, Matthew Loper, shares, “For individuals and communities facing social determinants of health, the high risk of behavioral health diagnoses, combined with the stresses of the pandemic, mean that these already vulnerable populations are at even greater risk for mental illness. We’re thrilled to support the Desert Oasis Healthcare team in their efforts to improve health outcomes for these communities in a way that also addresses key social determinants of health.”
Press Contact
Barry Dayton
Director of Marketing
Desert Oasis Healthcare
About Desert Oasis Healthcare
Formed in 1981 as one of the first medical groups in the desert communities of southern California, Desert Oasis Healthcare (DOHC) continues to advance with changes in the healthcare market. DOHC provides primary and immediate care, home health, palliative care, clinical research studies and other services to more than 60,000 members/patients living in the greater Coachella Valley and the Morongo Basin of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The multidisciplinary and comprehensive care programs of DOHC are committed to educating individuals on preventive health care in their daily lives, reflected in the DOHC motto, "Your Health. Your Life. Our Passion." For more information, visit www.mydohc.com.
About Wellth Inc.
Wellth is a digital behavior change company that motivates patients to adhere to their care plans using scalable, evidence-based strategies from behavioral economics. Our mission is to empower people living with chronic conditions to make healthy choices every day, driving better clinical outcomes and lower costs of care for health insurers and providers. Our advisory board includes former CEOs of the American Diabetes Association and American College of Cardiology, and we have been recognized with digital health innovation awards from the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, Heritage Provider Network, and Accenture. Wellth is based in both New York City and Los Angeles. For more information about Wellth, please visit the company's website at www.wellthapp.com.
