Month: April 2021

With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the country over the last year, another epidemic went largely overlooked: opioid abuse.

The addiction treatment community warns that a flood of post-COVID addiction care is on the horizon, and healthcare providers are looking for ways to address potential risk factors early to minimize the upcoming surge.

Here at Yosi Health, we understand the role technology plays in modernizing healthcare delivery to provide more effective, efficient patient care. That’s why we developed our Opioid Abuse Risk Screening (OARS) tool, a built-in psychological assessment that allows physicians to incorporate comprehensive clinical and mental health questions into their virtual patient intake platform to help identify and address potential opioid abuse.

Treatment Magazine recently covered the launch of this innovative new tool. Here’s a brief excerpt:

With opioid use surging in the United States during COVID—and the aftermath of the pandemic expected to deliver an additional spate of addiction issues—identifying patients with risk factors is more critical than ever.

A new virtual tool from New York-based Yosi Health gives healthcare providers a simple way to assess those risk factors before an opioid problem develops. The company’s Opioid Abuse Risk Screening (OARS) is a psychological assessment that collects answers to a set of comprehensive clinical and mental health questions through the Yosi Health virtual platform. Based on patient responses, clinicians can access a confidential report identifying risk levels.

Yosi Health founder and CEO Hari Prasad says the HIPAA-compliant OARS tool can be valuable in almost any care setting, including family practice, mental health, pain management and orthopedic practices.

Read on here: A New Virtual Tool to Identify Opioid Risk Factors

The in-office patient experience has lacked modernization—and that’s never been more evident than what we’ve all experienced during COVID-19. Many healthcare providers continue seeking out new ways to improve their in-office environment, now with a strong focus on minimizing crowding, inter-office exposure, and physical registration forms.

As Michelle Greenwald of Forbes said in a recent article, “few may be fully aware that a good solution is already here.”

Greenwald sat down with CEO & Founder Hari Prasad to discuss the way COVID-19 has accelerated the urgency to create fast, safe, socially distanced waiting room experiences—and how Yosi Health does all that and more. Here’s a brief excerpt:

I interviewed, Harry Prasad, CEO and founder of Yosi Health, who studied how common practices with in-person healthcare activities relating to data collection, insurance coverage and billing were negatively affecting the patient experience and adding unnecessary costs. His team visited hundreds of clinics to observe/learn at each stage of the medical care visit journey what was causing the pain points, and how the end-to-end experience could be made less duplicative, faster, more contactless, less labor intensive, and costly. While the team was familiar with the pain points, seeing it in action and understanding the frustration from the perspectives of both patients and administrators was vital for developing improved technology. As an example, they visited several clinics that used kiosks. Speaking to both patients and medical office workers highlighted the kiosks caused more even work and time to help patients use them.

Read on here: Medical Office Visits Re-Imagined: How Covid Is Accelerating Fully Virtual Waiting Rooms 

The opioid epidemic has been one of the most prolific healthcare crises in America since it was declared a public health emergency in 2017—and while COVID-19 has taken over media attention, the pandemic is exacerbating the problem.

In response to both the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the opioid epidemic, Yosi Health has partnered up with InteraSolutions to roll out an Opioid Abuse Risk Screening (OARS) tool to help healthcare providers screen and detect potential risk factors. The HIPAA/HITECH-compliant psychological assessment tool gives doctors the ability to assess each patient and determine a right-fit treatment plan.

CEO & Founder Hari Prasad discussed the rise in opioid abuse with Healthcare IT Today and the foundation of this revolutionary new OARS tool. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Opioid abuse is one of the most prolific health care crises in our country, yet it has been pushed off the front page by the very pandemic that continues to fuel the problem. 

According to Hari Prasad, co-founder and CEO of Yosi Health, there are several reasons for the rise. Although we associate opioid prescriptions with pain (particularly post-surgical pain), many people with depression and anxiety turn to the illegal use of opioids. And of course, depression and anxiety have become widespread during the pandemic. The over-prescribing scandal, and even new restrictions on dispensing prescriptions, have prevented some doctors from prescribing opioids irresponsibly, as a 2019 article from Kaiser Health News reports.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services offer guidelines for prescribing opioids. So why aren’t these guidelines being followed?

Read on here: A Three-Way Win For Yosi Health’s Opioid Risk Stratification: Accurate, Efficient, Standard