2024-07-04 16:26:04
The mental health institute PsyQ has made a digitization effort in recent years to be able to offer a new type of treatment. The aim was to shorten waiting lists, offer space and time to practitioners and patients and make treatment more efficient. The first results are encouraging. Online treatment is often used and appears to be more effective than traditional methods.
Off a new form of treatment initially focused on depression and anxiety disorders, as there were long waiting lists for these. After a successful small-scale pilot scheme, it was decided to scale up and make the treatment available to people on the waiting list who were open to it. This has provided more space and time for practitioners and patients who need something different. The treatment has also been improved to increase its effectiveness. All this was possible with the SET subsidy.
Annemiek van Dijke, PhD, clinical neuropsychologist and clinical psychologist-psychotherapist at PsyQ online proudly says: “Because we had already gained a lot of experience with 100% online treatment during the corona crisis, we were able to go in any amount in no time. We built websites where practitioners could see how it should be done. And we had already created webinars to inform each other about how to treat anxiety disorder, trauma or depression online. Within about 14 days we went to over 1,000 accounts.”
More effective online treatment
Research has now shown that online treatments are 100% more effective than on-site treatments, and in the case of depression even much more effective. The treatment uses the NiceDay e-health application, which supports the entire digital treatment. Clients use an app and for practitioners there is a web portal where they support their clients in real time. In addition, the waiting lists for online treatment are much shorter than with a regular process, partly because there is much less administration involved.
Van Dijke: “After the coronary measures, everyone thought that blended care (a mix of on-site and partial calls) gave the best of both worlds together, but our research still doesn’t show this. The functionalities of the app greatly enhance the effectiveness of the treatment. In addition, practitioners from the regular teams tend to see video calling as an ‘extra’ or necessity and not a ‘real therapy session’, which adds treatment minutes, but does not increase the effectiveness of the treatment.”
It also appears that online treatments can be used 25% more effectively in the long term. This means that the same number of professionals can help more clients. Van Dijke: “The online clinic now has seventy employees, including five online psychiatrists. We also appointed project leaders who could keep the focus on scaling up and the conditions to work 100% online. The product has increased, the number of practitioners and patients has increased and satisfaction is high.”
Convince practitioners and health insurers
The practitioners were not immediately convinced that 100% online treatment also leads to satisfied patients and a good treatment outcome. There were many prejudices. Partly for this reason, research has been (and continues to be) done on the quality of the therapeutic relationship. This was important to convince therapists who think that online treatment is not ‘real’ or that they cannot work on problems that are too complex. According to Van Dijke, these were important circumstances to overcome, but they succeeded.
The main insurers of PsyQ (VGZ and Zilveren Kruis) were positive from the beginning when PsyQ presented the case online and gave the mental health institution time to demonstrate its effectiveness. Meanwhile, funding has shifted from Diagnostic Treatment Combinations (DBC) to the Healthcare Performance Model (ZPM), which funds everything related to direct time, including chat.
Extensions
PsyQ is currently expanding online treatment to trauma, unexplained complaints, ADHD and personality problems. In addition, joint treatment with departments working on site is being explored and the treatment options available have been expanded. Additionally, in addition to individual therapy, group therapy is now also offered online.
PsyQ Online wants to grow tenfold in the next five years. To that end, the Superbrains app, currently used to treat ADHD, will be adapted into a broad psychotherapy support tool for individual therapy, relationship therapy and group therapy. PsyQ is developing a specific plan to increase blended treatment and use digital tools more frequently within regular mental health care.
Previous experiences
Online therapy has been used for a variety of purposes for some time. As early as 2017, it turned out that online cognitive behavioral therapy was a good alternative to face-to-face contact to help women with serious sexual problems after breast cancer. Online cognitive behavioral therapy has also been a solution for people with type 1 diabetes who suffer from chronic fatigue and for people with binge eating disorder.
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