The Road to Team-Based Primary Care and Behavioral Health

Primary care practices across the US are facing a number of important challenges right now; prominent among them is doing a much better job at recognizing and helping patients with behavioral health issues. The operative term for this is “integration” – a notion that ranges from, at minimum, co-locating behavioral health services and counselors in primary care settings; to, at best, everyone on staff having greater training and skills to detect and address the mental health and behavioral challenges that may be impacting a patient’s health. And, together as a clinical team, working with patients on ‘whole person’ solutions. Achieving this level of capacity doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re going to discuss why it’s an essential aim on the December 4 WIHI: The Road to Team-Based Primary Care and Behavioral Health.
 
Our guides on this WIHI include Dr. Ed Wagner, whose work in chronic care and primary care redesign is legendary. Dr. Wagner has most recently been focused on identifying effective practice models around the country as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative known as Learning from Effective Ambulatory Practices, or LEAP.  A strong commitment to behavioral health integration is often a standout feature of primary care practice transformation. The St. Charles and Cherokee Health Systems are cases in point. We’ll learn from Robin Henderson and Parinda Khatri about efforts to forge deeper linkages between behavioral health and primary care at their organizations; these efforts have already begun to demonstrate better patient outcomes and lower costs. Finally, we have IHI’s Cindy Hupke and Mara Laderman with us, each of whom has a hand in researching and teaching the programmatic designs necessary to help primary care teams engage in behavioral health integration. WIHI host Madge Kaplan and all the guests look forward to engaging with you on the topic of behavioral health integration on December 4. See you then!