A significant number of Americans aren’t participating in their own health care, inspite of having access through health insurance. The reasons can be diverse like mistrust in the medical system, social determinants of health, or lack of health literacy. At times labeled as “careavoidant” this population avoids engaging in medical care even though they suspect it to be necessary, when they experience major health issues and show symptoms as per the study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Lack of participation intensifies among individuals suffering from behavioral health issues like depression, anxiety and substance abuse. These health issues can create additional challenges resulting in increased risk and worsening of chronic medical conditions.

Foregoing needed medical care might lead to late detection or treatment of diseases, increased cost, lesser chances of survival, and human suffering that could be prevented.

Lack of engagement in care might lead to untreated chronic conditions that can grow worse overtime, creating preventable costs like emergency department and inpatient stays.

Population with behavioral health conditions and medical comorbidities can lead to inflated healthcare costs by upto 6.2 times with a bit or none of those dollars spent on behavioral care.

This can lead to $68B in avoidable annual costs. This figure is growing further as much as 7% annually according to some estimates.

As per a 2018 study, more than half of Americans fail to understand how to navigate the current healthcare landscape since it is complex. This creates an estimated $4.8 billion annual administrative cost burden on the payers.

Behavioral healthcare company, Ontrak, Inc., engages in applying advanced analytics to identify patients with untreated behavioral issues that lead to high costs for health plans and provides experts to help patients to overcome barriers to care.