Frequently Asked Questions

Behavioral health refers to the array of professional services delivered to populations suffering with mental illnesses, substance use disorders and maladaptive health behaviors, such as lack of exercise, poor dietary habits and lackluster engagement in care.

Integrated care is a general term for any attempt to fully or partially blend behavioral health services with general and/or specialty medical services. This blending can occur within inpatient or ambulatory clinical settings.

Access to existing mental health services is severely limited and unlikely to improve if the system continues to rely on traditional referral methods. There is substantial evidence that providing improved access to quality behavioral health care can:

• Save substantial amounts of money when managing chronic medical conditions
• Prevent costly hospitalizations
• Dramatically improve physical health outcomes
• Improve clinician and patient satisfaction

In addition, because of convenience and stigma, many patients are more willing to access mental health treatment when provided at their routine doctor’s office than at a specialty mental health clinical setting.

The best models of integrated vary, with intensive, multi-disciplinary team supports, allowing a primary care provider (PCP) to greatly expand their repertoire for behavioral health treatments. With assistance for patient outreach, engagement and follow-up, as well as tailored evidence-based recommendations, rates of improvement for common mental health conditions, such as Major Depressive Disorder, can be more than doubled when compared to existing care.
PCPs are already managing mental illness and substance use disorders and are often frustrated with the extra work of collaborating with mental health clinicians outside of their typical referral network. They also express frustration with trying to keep up with evidence-based management of common conditions. Quality integrated care programs substantially reduce the workload for PCPs through seamless communication and effortless expert consultation, vesting mental health outcomes solidly within a team-based framework that patients and clinicians alike can benefit from.