Integrated Behavioral Care Developments in Four States

The Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) posted a series of four stories on their blog that highlight developments in the field of behavioral health and primary care integration. The series covers a wide range of topics, including health care policy, delivery, and financing. Multiple members of the National Integration Academy Council (NIAC) and AHRQ Academy Team are featured in the series.

In the first blog post, “The Wild West and Healthcare Innovation: Colorado’s Frontier Legacy Continues,” Benjamin Miller, PsyD, (Academy Principal Investigator), describes a State Innovation Model grant that will allow Colorado to integrate behavioral health into 400 primary care practices through payment.

Neil Korsen, MD, MSc, (NIAC), and Becky Boober, PhD, co-authored the second blog post, which details some of the many efforts being made across Maine to advance integration of primary care and behavioral health. Almost 50 percent of primary care practices in Maine offer some level of integration largely as a result of two organizations, the Maine Health Access Foundation and Maine Quality Counts.

Christine Borst, PhD, and Cathy Hudgins, PhD, LMFT, relay their experiences with integration in North Carolina in the third blog post of the series. Borst describes the Center of Excellence for Integrated Care (COE), a program of the North Carolina Foundation for Advance Health Programs. COE is committed to helping develop and advance integrated care across the state by systematic training, assistance, and capacity-building to contracted entities. Hudgins lists a number of federally funded programs for integration in North Carolina. Both Borst and Hudgins contributed to a list of the top 10 lessons they learned as “practice transformationists.”

The final blog post outlines the experiences of Robin Henderson, PsyD, leading up to the passage of Oregon Senate Bill 832, which defines integrated care, behavioral health homes, and behavioral health clinicians. Henderson acknowledges that CJ Peek (NIAC) and Benjamin Miller provided “invaluable editorial guidance” in defining integrated care through their work for the AHRQ Academy. The new law will remove some of the financial and regulatory barriers that previously hindered provision of integrated primary care and behavioral health in Oregon.

Access the CFHA Blog