Virtual mental health care

Challenges with mental health care have been on the rise, and the Affordable Care Act mandated that insurers offer parity between mental health and physical health coverage. However, the efforts of insurers have been oriented around physical health for so much longer than for mental health, making parity in the short-term difficult. KFF Health News highlighted recent efforts by technology companies to offer apps as a partial substitute for mental health providers.

Understandably, insurers are eager for alternatives to offering mental health providers higher reimbursements. Unfortunately, the article points out that these solutions in their current form might not be effective, and might even do harm. Given the rapid pace of technological innovations, these apps might eventually offer convenient and cost-effective options for diagnosis and maybe even treatment. However, in the meantime, mental health continues to be a problem for many, and insurers might struggle to achieve parity between mental health coverage and physical health coverage.