Some children in Wisconsin are facing a mental and behavioral health crisis. Their rates of anxiety, depression and suicide are alarming high and there is not enough access to care.
When COVID-19 hit, the issue only became more pronounced with new stresses and anxieties placed on kids and medical appointments being postponed.
Children’s Wisconsin took this crisis as a call for rapid innovation. Children’s knew mental and behavioral health issues weren’t going to wait for COVID-19 to end, so the hospital’s mental and behavioral health, digital health and information technology teams got to work to quickly create telehealth services for kids in need.
Prior to April, Children’s did not have the ability for telehealth visits for mental and behavioral health. But since April, its 150 providers have completed more than 30,000 telehealth connections.
In fact, even as the hospital restarted in-person visits, telehealth still accounts for the majority of its mental and behavioral health appointments. While telehealth may not be new or innovative, the speed with which Children’s responded to the pandemic, got a platform up and running and worked with its Information Services and security teams to expand its network capabilities is unique and remarkable in a health care environment.
