Forecasting psychiatry demand per health system to recover lost appointments

• ~11%

  Patient access

  Recovered the appointments that were quietly falling off

• Patient wait times

  Tighter ED and inpatient wait times [confirm number]

Results at a glance

• Recovered the ~11% of appointments that were falling off
• Demand forecast per health system, broken down to each team
• Missed and at-risk cases caught from EMR data and rescheduled
• Tighter ED and inpatient wait times

About Iris Telehealth

Iris Telehealth staffs psychiatrists and behavioral health Care Teams for 75 health systems across roughly 300 hospitals, delivering 24/7 telepsychiatry into emergency and inpatient departments.

The pain

Patients were falling through the cracks. About 11% of appointments were quietly dropping off, visible only after the fact in EMR data. Every one was a patient who didn't get seen and revenue that didn't land.

Coverage lagged demand. Without a clear read on where psychiatric demand was heading at each health system, staffing was always a step behind.

Demand isn't uniform. Each health system, and each team inside it, has its own pattern; one org-wide guess overstaffs in one place and leaves patients waiting in another.

~11% of appointments were falling off — caught only by reading the EMR data after the fact, never in time to act.

The challenge

Iris needed to put a scarce psychiatry workforce ahead of demand, health system by health system, and catch the cases slipping away before they became care gaps.

The solution

Untether forecasts demand for each health system and breaks it down to the team level, then checks it against EMR signals to surface missed and at-risk cases for faster rescheduling. Operations can see exactly where availability is needed next.

The impact

The appointments that were falling off get caught and rescheduled, wait times tighten, and scarce psychiatry hours line up with where patients actually need them — better access and better margin from the same Care Team.