Montefiore Medical Center received a CMS Health Care Innovation Award to develop the Bronx Behavioral Health Integration Project (Bronx-BHIP), a program that integrates behavioral health care for children and adults in primary care settings.
Bronx-BHIP focuses on identifying and providing care to individuals of all ages for a broad range of behavioral health conditions in primary care settings. The integrated care model will administer evidence-based, age-appropriate behavioral health screening and other services to Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries, as well as members of several health plans, in selected Montefiore primary care practices. There are also web-based video components to the program to facilitate access to care.
Patients with behavioral disorders will be treated by a team that includes a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker and a care manager, who will collaborate with primary care providers to provide screenings, assessments, treatment and other patient follow-up.
The reimbursement methodology that Bronx-BHIP will test is designed to help accelerate adoption of the program and support program sustainability by paying providers a fee for the early identification of behavioral health issues and the continued treatment and care coordination of patients while being held to a number of quality indicators. The long term goal is to demonstrate that patients with behavioral health disorders can be successfully treated in a primary care setting at a lower cost to the health care system.
