Psychbedfinder.com FAQ’s

Psychbedfinder.com is an Internet-accessed service that substantially reduces the time and cost of matching available psychiatric inpatient services with patients in acute need of such services. The value of Psychbedfinder.com is articulated below through answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's).

Psychbedfinder.com enables health care professionals (called Subscribers) searching for psychiatric inpatient services (called Providers) to find available psychiatric services matching certain simple but essential criteria. The process is significantly faster than using the telephone as it is equivalent to calling, and reaching, all participating Providers (those institutions providing inpatient psychiatric or substance abuse services) instantly and simultaneously (instead of sequentially) to identify the closest available psychiatric services for a particular patient. An important benefit of the service for both Providers and Subscribers is the capacity to obtain detailed information regarding inpatient service demand within a given region organized by date, zip code, age, gender, and insurance.

After setting up an account at www.psychbedfinder.com, a Subscriber views a search screen on which 5 required and 1 optional data fields are completed. The required data fields are: primary treatment setting (psychiatric versus substance abuse), gender, age, insurance, and home zip code. An optional field allows a brief narrative description or patient diagnosis. After hitting the "Search" button, the Subscriber is presented with a screen that lists up to five hospitals that have services available satisfying the required criteria These results are rank-ordered by geographic proximity to the patient's residence, as well as the current intake clinician and phone number of each facility. Each Provider listing notes its participation in a network (e.g., Partners Healthcare, Caritas, etc.) as well as unit-specific clinical expertise and/or exclusions (e.g., unable to accept patient on IV’s). The search screen also includes up-to-date Managed Care Organization (MCO) and insurance contact information to facilitate the pre-authorization process. Finally, Subscribers will have the option to print a map to any facility.

No, it currently is not. Our own hospital experience as well as feedback from other providers is that clinicians require discussion of pertinent clinical and placement information before an admission is completed. Future versions may include limited bed holds or an option to place patients on a waiting list for a day if such features improve the system.

If psychiatric services are not currently available the system will rerun the search automatically every 10 minutes for up to 5 days until a bed is found and an e-mail will be sent indicating that an appropriate psychiatric service has become available.

Organizations will require a computer with Windows 98 or higher operating system with access to the Internet.

It takes about 15 minutes to set up a new account and about 1 minute to conduct a search of available psychiatric services or to update a Provider's service availability.

Patients requiring inpatient care will spend much less time waiting in ED's, on medical floors, or in clinicians' offices as they await an inpatient bed. Patients may also be placed in facilities located closer to their homes. Patient satisfaction will increase as the wait time for accessing inpatient care is reduced and patients access services located closer to home.

The high costs associated with finding available services, as well as monitoring patients during a search, will be reduced. The service will therefore help free up over-taxed ED staff to provide better patient care by reducing the time staff spend making multiple phone calls to one hospital after another seeking an available service capable of taking a given patient. Shorter wait times will improve patient flow, allow for more appropriate allocation of ED resources, and increase satisfaction with emergency departments, insurance companies and MCO's. Finally, the data provided by Psychbedfinder.com will enable public officials to better plan for the health care needs of their citizen constituents.

Psychbedfinder.com will allow Providers to instantly and simultaneously alert all Subscribers seeking services to current bed availability matching specific criteria with regard to age, gender, insurance and patient location. Additional benefits will include patients being admitted more quickly once a service is available, unit intake staff fielding fewer unproductive phone calls, and facilities having the capacity to obtain more precise market information regarding potential admissions within a regional service area.

Subscriber (ED's, crisis teams, etc.) fees are $300 per month for up to 30 searches and $1.00 per search above 30. This nets to between $10 per search for an ED that averages one search per day and $1.89 per search for a service that conducts 10 searches per day. Additionally, low volume hospital ED's, MCO's, nursing homes, nursing home psychiatric consulting services, and others may elect to pay $500 for a 6-month subscription that includes up to 25 searches. Finally, individual clinicians in private practice who are members of their state associations will be able to conduct a small number of searches each year for little or no direct cost. By eliminating hours of nursing, security, and crisis clinician staff time associated with psychiatric patients waiting to be placed in a bed, the service will likely save organizations thousands of dollars per year in salaries as well as telephone usage costs.Provider listing fees are $300 per month plus 10 cents per bed per day for more than 12 staffed beds. For example, a unit with 20 beds will pay $324 per month and a hospital with 100 beds will pay $568 per month. This nets to between $.83 per bed per day for a 12 bed service and $.19 per bed per day for a 100 bed service. The service will thus pay for itself on a 12 bed unit if any one of the following occurs: 7 additional days of reimbursed inpatient care are provided over the course of a year OR 120 hours of staff time in fielding intakes is eliminated over the course of a year OR $3,600 in marketing expenses are eliminated per year. Monthly payments will be made electronically through a credit card. Any hospital or agency that prefers not to use this method may pay by check in advance each month. This method greatly reduces billing and postage expenses.

In the initial rollout of this service Providers of inpatient services will not be charged until a threshold of 70% of ED's within their region have signed on to the service. Subscribers will not be charged until 70% of the inpatient providers within their region are using the system. We anticipate between 80% and 95% utilization of the system by both Providers and Subscribers within one year of our initial rollout.

Psychbedfinder.com works by an entirely different business process than posting available beds on an Internet site or faxing information on filled or available beds, insurances accepted, etc. Providers are not required to make public whether or not they have openings and, if so, how many unfilled beds they have. Instead, like the children's game Battleship ™, searchers will only view "hits" (i.e., psychiatric services available). Provider hospitals may not display availability on a particular search for a host of reasons including being full, having no openings for males or females at that time, holding the last 1 or 2 beds for patients in their own ED or primary service area, temporary staffing problems, unit acuity, etc. We believe that the capacity to match service need, insurance, gender, and age and to get results that are rank ordered by geographic proximity to a patient's home serves both a public good and greatly improves the operational efficiency (and thus cost) of emergency departments, MCO's, crisis teams and others. We also believe that being able to print a map to a given facility for patients and their families will improve care. Finally, having the name and current phone number of the person processing intakes for each facility with a current opening will further reduce unsuccessful phone calls. Though some of these features exist on other Internet sites, none include the full capacity of psychbedfinder.com

Free Care patients are listed as "uninsured" in a database that lists all insurances operating in a given state. This database is accessed through the familiar drop-down menu format seen on many interactive web sites. As with all criteria, (gender, geography, full census, insurance, etc.) a hospital can temporarily deselect (turn off) its availability to take patients with certain characteristics, including payor source. The reason a given hospital does not appear on a particular search will remain unknown; it could be due to any of the criteria included in the search. We predict that this method of finding psychiatric services will reduce the time it takes to locate psychiatric services for both insured and uninsured patients.

Psychbedfinder.com is privately owned. The Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems, the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Department of Mental Health, the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership, and the Division of Medical Assistance will be invited to participate on our advisory board. The advisory board will provide guidance and protection of hospital and patient interests including input on the content of user agreements as they identify how the data may and may not be used.

The design and implementation of Psychbedfinder.com solves the many operational barriers implicit in having any one or more of the above individual entities create their own system. It would be impractical for a searcher in an ED, crisis team, nursing home or individual private practice to search multiple insurance, MCO or hospital network-sponsored sites. Note that psychbedfinder.com search results will include a clear notation of hospital network affiliation so as to allow easy identification of inpatient units to enable a given hospital network ED (e.g., Partners Healthcare) to use a network inpatient service if they so wish. The system will also enable detailed reports within provider networks.

Psychbedfinder.com is HIPAA compliant at two levels. The system does not require and thus does not store or transmit ANY information that can be used to determine patient identity. We collect only treatment setting (psychiatric or substance abuse), home ZIP code, age, gender, and insurance; none of which is HIPAA protected. Further, the site has been constructed with all of the technical and operational security features that are required should HIPAA protected information be used on the site in the future.

To arrange a demonstration or for more information, contact Michael Krupa, Health Partners Technology 781-979-0700 ext.111.