Pay For Success in Mental Health Weekly

First PFS Initiative to Focus on Those Living With a Mental Illness

Telecare's Pay For Success (PFS) project has been featured on page one of Mental Health Weekly’s October 26 issue. PFS is Telecare's opportunity to share what we learned about people with mental illness and complex challenges.

The Santa Clara PFS program is being designed to serve residents with acute mental illness, who are among the highest users of the county's psychiatric emergency and inpatient services. It is a funding model where the government pays for services only if a service provider, Telecare, achieves clearly defined results.

"For this group, we anticipate reducing their predicted use of these acute and costly services by 35 percent," said Faith Richie, Senior Vice President of Development at Telecare.

Toni Tullys, MPA, Director of Behavioral Health Services at the Santa Clara County Health and Hospital System, praised Telecare’s impressive track record of developing programs that aim to reduce hospital stays, saying that Telecare has "the expertise of working with individuals with very high needs and developing, designing, and implementing services to support the needs of that population."

"We’re bringing government and philanthropy and the private sector together with the unique focus on innovations and outcomes," said Anne Bakar, President and CEO of Telecare.

Preliminary design and planning work is being done now. The program is scheduled to launch in 2016.