Literature Collection

A Workforce Crisis. Across the nation there is a high degree of concern about the state of the behavioral health workforce and pessimism about its future. Workforce problems have an impact on almost every aspect of prevention and treatment across all sectors of the diverse behavioral health field. The issues encompass difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, the absence of career ladders for employees, marginal wages and benefits, limited access to relevant and effective training, the erosion of supervision, a vacuum with respect to future leaders, and financing systems that place enormous burdens on the workforce to meet high levels of demand with inadequate resources. Most critically, there are significant concerns about the capability of the workforce to provide quality care. The majority of the workforce is uninformed about and unengaged in health promotion and prevention activities. Too many in the workforce also lack familiarity with resilience- and recovery-oriented practices and are generally reluctant to engage children, youth, and adults, and their families, in collaborative relationships that involve shared decision-making about treatment options. It takes well over a decade for proven interventions to make their way into practice, since prevention and treatment services are driven more by tradition than by science. The workforce lacks the racial diversity of the populations it serves and is far too often insensitive to the needs of individuals, as these are affected by ethnicity, culture, and language. In large sections of rural America, there simply is no mental health or addictions workforce.There is overwhelming evidence that the behavioral health workforce is not equipped in skills or in numbers to respond adequately to the changing needs of the American population. While the incidence of co-occurring mental and addictive disorders among individuals has increased dramatically, most of the workforce lacks the array of skills needed to assess and treat persons with these co-occurring conditions.Training and education programs largely have ignored the need to alter their curricula to address this problem and, thus, the nation continues to prepare new members of the workforce who simply are underprepared from the moment they complete their training.

As treatment expansion in the opioid epidemic continues, it is important to examine how the makeup of individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) is evolving. Treatment programs are increasingly utilizing buprenorphine, an effective OUD medication. This exploratory study examines sex and gender differences in psychosocial, clinical and substance use treatment characteristics of a clinical population in outpatient medication treatment for OUD with buprenorphine. This is a secondary data analysis from a cross-sectional survey study with retrospective medical record review conducted with patients recruited from an office-based opioid treatment clinic between July-September 2019. Participants on buprenorphine for at least 28 days at time of survey completion were included (n=133). Differences between men and women were explored with Pearson χ(2) and Fisher's Exact Tests for categorical variables and T-Tests for continuous variables. The sample was 55.6% women and nearly three-fourths Black (70.7%). Mean days in current treatment episode was 431.6 (SD=244.82). Women were younger and more likely to be unemployed, identify as a sexual minority, and live alone with children than men. More women than men had a psychiatric comorbidity. Women reported more prescription opioid misuse while men had more heroin only opioid use. More men reported comorbid alcohol use and a history of drug overdose. One-third of participants reported recent discrimination in a healthcare setting due to substance use. As buprenorphine-based outpatient treatment programs continue to expand, present study findings support evaluation of the unique needs of men and women in order to better tailor OUD-related services and improve treatment outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Irritability, a common behavioral problem for school-aged children, is often first assessed by primary care providers, who manage about a third of mental health conditions in children. Until recent changes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), irritability was often associated with mood disorders, which may have led to increases in bipolar disorder diagnosis and prescription of mood stabilizing medication. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to explore differences between the approaches psychiatric and primary care providers use to assess irritability. METHODS: A single trained interviewer conducted detailed interviews and collected demographic data from a homogeneous group of physicians that saturated with a sample size of 17 pediatric, family medicine, and psychiatric providers who evaluate and treat school-aged children. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. RESULTS: In general, primary care providers chose to refer children with irritability to mental health specialists when medication management became complex, while the psychiatric providers chose behavior modification and parent education strategies rather than medications. The psychiatric group had a significantly higher caseload mix, prior experience with irritability, and more confidence in their assessment capabilities. There was lack of continuing medical education about irritability in all groups. CONCLUSION: This preliminary study highlights the importance of collaboration between primary care and subspecialties to promote accurate assessment and subsequent treatment of school-aged children with irritability, who can represent a safety concern for self and others. More research is needed to establish an efficient method of assessing and managing irritability in primary care and better utilization of specialists.

IMPORTANCE: Health care spending in the United States continues to grow. Mental health and substance use disorders (MH/SUDs) are prevalent and associated with worse health outcomes and higher health care spending; alternative payment and delivery models (APMs) have the potential to facilitate higher quality, integrated, and more cost-effective MH/SUD care. OBJECTIVE: To systematically review and summarize the published literature on populations and MH/SUD conditions examined by APM evaluations and the associations of APMs with MH/SUD outcomes. EVIDENCE REVIEW: A literature search of MEDLINE, PsychInfo, Scopus, and Business Source was conducted from January 1, 1997, to May 17, 2019, for publications examining APMs for MH/SUD services, assessing at least 1 MH/SUD outcome, and having a comparison group. A total of 27 articles met these criteria, and each was classified according to the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network's APM framework. Strength of evidence was graded using a modified Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine framework. FINDINGS: The 27 included articles evaluated 17 APM implementations that spanned 3 Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network categories and 6 subcategories, with no single category predominating the literature. APMs varied with regard to their assessed outcomes, funding sources, target populations, and diagnostic focuses. The APMs were primarily evaluated on their associations with process-of-care measures (15 [88.2%]), followed by utilization (11 [64.7%]), spending (9 [52.9%]), and clinical outcomes (5 [29.4%]). Medicaid and publicly funded SUD programs were most common, with each representing 7 APMs (41.2%). Most APMs focused on adults (11 [64.7%]), while fewer (2 [11.8%]) targeted children or adolescents. More than half of the APMs (9 [52.9%]) targeted populations with SUD, while 4 (23.5%) targeted MH populations, and the rest targeted MH/SUD broadly defined. APMs were most commonly associated with improvements in MH/SUD process-of-care outcomes (12 of 15 [80.0%]), although they were also associated with lower spending (4 of 8 [50.0%]) and utilization (5 of 11 [45.5%]) outcomes, suggesting gains in value from APMs. However, clinical outcomes were rarely measured (5 APMs [29.4%]). A total of 8 APMs (47.1%) assessed for gaming (ie, falsification of outcomes because of APM incentives) and adverse selection, with 1 (12.5%) showing evidence of gaming and 3 (37.5%) showing evidence of adverse selection. Other than those assessing accountable care organizations, few studies included qualitative evaluations. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this study, APMs were associated with improvements in process-of-care outcomes, reductions in MH/SUD utilization, and decreases in spending. However, these findings cannot fully substitute for assessments of clinical outcomes, which have rarely been evaluated in this context. Additionally, this systematic review identified some noteworthy evidence for gaming and adverse selection, although these outcomes have not always been duly measured or analyzed. Future research is needed to better understand the varied qualitative experiences across APMs, their successful components, and their associations with clinical outcomes among diverse populations and settings.