Working together with you, your practice, your facility or agency, we can provide the best in psychiatric and behavioral healthcare.  

Our Mission:  Starfish Health provides compassionate and collaborative  Developmental and Behavioral healthcare in a person-centered, accessible environment, maximizing quality of life. Starfish Health is the premier assessment, diagnostic and system of care network for Behavioral and Developmental Health in Tennessee and Virginia.  

 The Problem:  The cost of supporting people with autism spectrum disorders throughout their lives could be as high as $2.4 million per person. (JAMA Pediatrics, 2014)  For the person with autism, diagnosis is a doorway into a social role as a potential lifelong service user.  For families, an autism diagnosis can also mean a lifetime of absorbing many of the financial and care giving burdens associated with the disorder, especially in adulthood when the availability of societal supports diminishes.

 One in 68 U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a 30% increase from 1 in 88 two years ago, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  There is no cure for Autism, adults that can, learn to work with it, and those that can’t, will need a life time of support.  The earlier a child is diagnosed with autism, the better their chances of overcoming the difficulties that come with the disorder. (Kennedy Krieger Institute, 2012)

 In a groundbreaking 2010 settlement between the state of Georgia and the U.S. Justice Department, Georgia agreed to establish community services for about 9,000 people with mental illness, and to create community support and crisis intervention teams to help people with developmental disabilities and mental illness avoid hospitalization. However 4 years later independent reviewers say there is an urgent need to ensure competent and sufficient health practitioner oversight of individuals who are medically fragile and require assistance with most aspects of their daily lives in the group homes and residential facilities that are funded to provided these services as a result of the closing of state ran hospitals and group homes (Georgia Health News, 2014)

 These court actions are occurring all of the U.S.  Every state has either complied already, is currently under lawsuit, or will soon face one, and will have to face the inevitability of the facts; that their system of care is wholly underprepared for the amount of individuals and families that will need high quality care for developmental and behavioral health issues in the short and long term. 

 Tennessee has over 7000 people with developmental, intellectual and behavioral disabilities on a waiting list for waiver services.  N.C has decided to decrease the amount of funding per year per waiver service participants in order to give more folks on the waiting list, at least access to some services. 

 Starfish’s Development and  Behavioral Health  services will be in great demand in every area of the country due to these growing needs.  However beginning with diagnosis and assessment, it is imperative that it is done in collaboration with all the systems in a community in order to gather all the details needed to make the best decisions and assessments.  This is part of the Starfish Health model. 

 There are many differences between a medical diagnosis and an educational determination, or school evaluation, of a disability. A medical diagnosis is made by a physician based on an assessment of symptoms and diagnostic tests. A medical diagnosis of autism, for instance, is most frequently made by a physician according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR or DSM V) of the American Psychological Association. This manual guides physicians in diagnosing an Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Asperger's Disorder or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified according to a specific number of symptoms.  An educational determination, in contrast, is made by a multidisciplinary evaluation team comprised of various school professionals. The evaluation results are looked at by a team of qualified professionals and the parents to determine whether a student qualifies for special education and related services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (Hawkins, 2009).

It is essential that parents do not rely only on an educational determination that their child does not have a developmental disability, however many Individuals living in rural and isolated areas face special challenges in receiving timely, quality health care in order for a quality and informed medical diagnoses to be made.  These areas often suffer from shortages of physicians and other health care providers, and the costs of providing quality health care in a rural health infrastructure can extend beyond available resources. (USDHHS, 2014).   

 A Solution:   A person centered system of care cooperative.  

 Private providers need to partner with each other along with state agencies in order to combat the problem of lack of quality care.  There is no one-stop shop solution for disability and behavioral health treatment, nor should there be.  Developmental and Intellectual disabilities come in a spectrum of conditions, and will need a life time of analysis in order to determine the best course of assistant to maximize the quality of life to the individual and support system. 

 Starfish’s model is to co-locate with physician practices or residential facilitates in areas where access to high quality developmental and behavioral healthcare is limited, partner with these local providers to bring in weekly diagnosticians or treatment professionals, and utilizing a state of the art electronic cloud-based software system, E-prescribing tools, and face to face client interaction with trained physicians via web cam tele-psychiatry equipment and software. 

 Using collocating agreements with local health care providers and utilizing our low cost software, and corporate office billing and management support, start up costs in each expansion site will be minimal, and only the cost of staffing will limit the growth curve.  Thus ramp up will be based on productivity of local staff and market demand.  Some locations will only need case management services and access to equipment and software for diagnosis and assessment needs, others may need co-located nurse practitioners, and licensed therapists based on the demand curve and needs of the areas.  Each expansion opportunity will be analyzed for its feasibility. 

 Starfish will utilize all the systems in place in a given area, and assist them with their needs with high quality and person centered delivery of medication and case management services, with quick turnaround diagnostic assessments, and impactful counseling and therapy sessions delivered in team interaction encounters.