

The partnership between Horizon BCBSNJ and AbleTo couldn’t have come soon enough.
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“We are grateful for having their full partnership on this service that will be crucial for so many people in New Jersey,” she added. Horizon BCBSNJ's commitment to addressing the growing mental health needs of the state and removing obstacles to care made AbleTo’s expanded telemedicine program possible, said Pande. “Getting high-quality care shouldn’t be limited to in-person office visits, especially when we still need to relieve the burden on our health care system.” “For Horizon BCBSNJ members, it’s never been easier or more affordable to access telemedicine, including for mental health challenges,” said Kunis. This partnership builds on Horizon BCBSNJ’s larger initiative to provide in-network telemedicine services to members with zero out-of-pocket costs until at least June 30, 2020.
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Now, AbleTo has partnered with Horizon BCBSNJ to offer its members free access to AbleTo’s individual teletherapy services. “The outbreak and ensuing mental health crisis gave us a quick pathway to make this new teletherapy available in a really timely and relevant way,” said Reena Pande, MD, chief medical officer at AbleTo. But when the pandemic began, Kunis collaborated with AbleTo to alter their relationship and get ready for the wider swath of people who would need help coping with their rising stress and anxiety levels.įortunately, the company was already in the process of developing a teletherapy program to meet the needs of the broader population even before the pandemic.

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, AbleTo, a leading provider of telephonic mental health care, worked with Horizon BCBSNJ to treat mostly those with chronic illnesses like diabetes or members recovering from serious health events like heart surgery. “The fact that we were facing a pandemic, a crisis virtually no one has ever experienced before here in New Jersey, meant we were going to need help dealing with a surge for counseling and therapy.” It hits just as soon, but it typically remains for months or years at the end of the triggering event,” said Kunis.

“The demand for mental health care skyrockets when we have a major crisis of any kind. In April alone, calls to two New Jersey mental health hotlines climbed by 37 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data from the state Department of Human Services. Kunis, who is Vice President for Behavioral Health at the state’s largest health insurer Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ), has spent her career in mental health, and she knew that a wave of anxiety, depression, substance use disorder and other mental health problems was about to crash because she saw it happen after both 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. By Thomas Vincz, Public Relations Managerįrom the moment the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold, Suzanne Kunis knew that the deadly virus wouldn’t just fill emergency rooms and ICU wards with patients who needed care for the virus.
