Carrum Health, which offers value-based specialty care for employers, has teamed up with Lyra Health, a workforce mental health solutions provider.
The partnership will integrate Carrum’s specialty care services, including surgical, cancer care and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment with Lyra’s behavioral health services. SUD patients will receive a warm hand-off to Lyra’s recovery programs, and surgical and oncology patients will receive support for anxiety and depression. Any Lyra members who need specialty care can be referred to Carrum. This type of coordination is often missing in healthcare, executives say.
“We see a great need for mental health support, in particular with substance use disorder, across so many employers and Americans in general,” Matthew Eurey, chief commercial officer at Carrum, told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive interview.
“The moment that this partnership is coming together, for employers and for healthcare in the U.S., is really meaningful,” echoed Sean McBride, Lyra’s president of employer solutions, in the same interview. With more patients returning to hospitals post-COVID, the trend is pushing employers to look more closely at cost management. “A lot of the past tools that employers and that we have used across the U.S. to try to manage costs have not worked that well.”
The partnership will help support seamless care coordination for high-need, high-cost patients to improve and lower costs. Carrum’s service lines are integrated into Lyra’s workflow, meaning simplified contracting: Lyra members can access Carrum’s specialty care network, and vice versa, without extra procurement.
About 5-10% of Lyra members need to be referred to higher acuity care, per McBride. Though the volume is low, the expense potential is enormous. If they are not proactively managed, costs can spiral out of control. This “is a huge opportunity for employers to do the right thing and manage costs at the same time,” McBride said.
Carrum connects members to a vetted network of specialty providers known as Centers of Excellence. The providers are evaluated on more than 55 aspects of quality by Carrum. If someone needs high-acuity care, Carrum aims to get them into a facility within the same day.
“When there’s a cry for help, you need to react as quickly as possible,” Eurey said.
Meanwhile, mental healthcare is an emerging cost driver for employers: 73% of employers reported an increase in mental health and substance use disorder services, the Business Group on Health has found, and another 17% anticipate an increase in the future. The companies argue they can reduce costs spent through coordinated care pathways and bundled payment models.
Carrum said it can reduce unnecessary procedures by as much as 30%, lower readmissions by 80% and save employers up to 45% per episode of surgical care. Lyra has served more than 20 million people globally through direct employer contracts and more than 100 million lives through payer and other partnerships. The company claims its model reliably improves depression and anxiety symptoms throughout treatment and reduces overall healthcare claims costs by 26%.