Service Line Intelligence | Behavioral Health

The U.S. is experiencing a behavioral health crisis, a trend that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, almost 60M American adults had a mental illness, but more than 10M of them did not receive any form of treatment. Meanwhile, the share of mental health-related prescriptions has grown continuously as a percentage of all prescriptions since 2017, rising to 21.8% in 2021.

Behavioral health demand forecasts reveal that by 2026, 25.2% of Americans will require behavioral health services, which is 1.2 percentage points above observed 2021 levels. This proportion is likely to increase even more because of policies such as new screening recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The increase in behavioral health disease burden has forced health systems, payers, employers, policymakers and financiers to consider different strategies, without a clear picture of what future demand will be, who utilizes behavioral health services, where utilization is concentrated (e.g., geography, care setting), which therapies are preferred by patients and providers, or how patients prefer to access behavioral healthcare (e.g., telehealth). Answering these questions with data-driven insights is a prerequisite for successfully navigating the evolving behavioral health market.

How it Works: 
In contrast to the publicly available Trends Shaping the Health Economy: Behavioral Health  report that is limited to research at the national level, Service Line Intelligence | Behavioral Health is a premium subscription that analyzes changes in demand, supply and yield at the condition, therapeutic, provider and market levels.

Analytic and Research Methods

Our research begins with our industry-leading dataset that contains detailed medical and pharmacy claims for more than 300 million patients. By leveraging extensive machine learning methods, our dataset provides a longitudinal view into the billable interactions between individual providers and patients across care settings, payer types and geographies. To provide comprehensive insight into the individual patient journey, we link our proprietary data to other sources to bring in social determinants and consumer behavior.

Comprised of health policy analysts, data scientists and economists, our research team takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing and interpreting healthcare trends using a mix of rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods.