Lexicon for Behavioral Health and Primary Care Integration

In this emerging field, like others, it is important to develop shared language that enables communication and collaboration across sites, disciplines, and time. The Academy’s Lexicon is a set of concepts and definitions developed by expert consensus for what we mean by behavioral health and primary care integration—a functional definition —what things look like in practice. This consensus Lexicon enables effective communication and concerted action among clinicians, care systems, health plans, payers, researchers, policymakers, business modelers, and patients working for effective, widespread implementation on a meaningful scale.

The original version of the Academy’s Lexicon was developed through an Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) small conference grant in 2009 to develop a National Research Agenda for Collaborative Care. Through the planning process for that meeting, it was clear that the experts used the same words to refer to different concepts or practices and struggled to communicate effectively. After the meeting’s pilot work to develop a shared understanding, participants agreed that the Lexicon was an important, even critical, advancement for the field but that it needed further refinement. To that end, AHRQ funded an R-13 grant that enabled C.J. Peek and the University of Minnesota to collaborate with the Academy’s National Integration Advisory Council (NIAC) to provide expert consensus and further refine the Lexicon. The current lexicon is the culmination of that effort.

The Lexicon starts with an executive summary that gives the reader an overview of what is to follow. The pages that follow expand and clarify the content. Appendices include a Glossary of common terms.

Additional links provided here:

• The Lexicon for Behavioral Health and Primary Care Integration is available as a PDF for those who wish to read or use separately.
• The Executive Summary is available as a separate PDF for those who wish to read or use separately.

Other derivative applications or tools may be added as they are developed.