Literature Collection

BACKGROUND: The Sparkbrook Children's Zone (SCZ) is an integrated health and social care offer for children and young people (CYP) in an economically marginalised area of Birmingham, UK. This study sought to measure: clinic reach to CYP living in deprivation; proportion of CYP receiving preventive health offers; referral rate to secondary care; proportion of CYP referred to a family support worker. METHODS: Observational study using routinely collected data to evaluate activity and impact of the SCZ. SCZ weekly clinics, embedded in a partner primary care network, are located in Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East, Birmingham's second most populous ward with a young population, high diversity and high infant mortality. The clinics provide preventive health, clinical care, mental health support and social support to CYP <16 years. UK Health Research Authority approval reference: 25/PR/0168. RESULTS: From March 2022 to December 2024, 2265 CYP were booked into clinics (93.5% slots taken up); 89% of families were from the bottom Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile.Preventive healthcare: immunisation advice increased from 10.7% in 2023 to 40.2% in 2024; oral health promotion from 29.2% to 46.8%; smoking cessation advice from 1.8% to 12.5%; 97% eligible children received Healthy Start vitamins; 83% had body mass index measured.Clinical care: 73.8% of CYP discharged after seeing General Practitioner/paediatrician, 3.8% referred to secondary care, 14.7% patients were not brought to appointments.Social support: 28.2% of CYP referred to a family support worker. Five top reasons for referral: feeding, behaviour, activities, special educational needs and disabilities, parenting skills. CONCLUSION: Initial data suggest preventive health and social support can be successfully integrated in a neighbourhood health offer for CYP living in deprivation, with low referral rates to secondary care.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is often underdiagnosed, especially at early stages when symptoms are mild, and patients may benefit from new and recently approved anti-amyloid therapies. An updated patient care pathway may facilitate timely diagnosis and intervention. We conducted a scan of published information and convened an expert panel of health care professionals to gain insights on early AD care pathways. We developed an Early AD Patient Care Pathway as an implementation guide that includes new diagnostic and treatment modalities and addresses needs and opportunities. The Early AD Patient Care Pathway focuses on patient identification, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and management and monitoring. Operational readiness considerations aid pathway implementation and include evaluating and addressing gaps in program and business planning, technology, education and resources, access and reimbursement, and care coordination. The pathway is adaptable to health system needs and may be further tested and refined for sustainability. HIGHLIGHTS: We analyzed published information and insights from subject matter experts on care pathways for early Alzheimer's disease.We identified opportunities to improve screening of at-risk patients, make appropriate specialist referrals, and ensure timely access and care coordination for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring as a means of incorporating the latest diagnostics and therapy options.We developed a care pathway that promotes an integrated approach to patient care and is adaptable to various healthcare settings with input from subject matter experts.

BACKGROUND: Although collaborative care (CoCM) is an evidence-based and widely adopted model, reimbursement challenges have limited implementation efforts nationwide. In recent years, Medicare and other payers have activated CoCM-specific codes with the primary aim of facilitating financial sustainability. OBJECTIVE: To investigate and describe the experiences of early adopters and explorers of Medicare's CoCM codes. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Fifteen interviews were conducted between October 2017 and May 2018 with 25 respondents representing 12 health care organizations and 2 payers. Respondents included dually boarded medicine/psychiatry physicians, psychiatrists, primary care physicians (PCPs), psychologists, a registered nurse, administrative staff, and billing staff. APPROACH: A semi-structured interview guide was used to address health care organization characteristics, CoCM services, patient consent, CoCM operational components, and CoCM billing processes. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using a content analysis approach conducted jointly by the research team. KEY RESULTS: Successful billing required buy-in from key, interdisciplinary stakeholders. In planning for CoCM billing implementation, several organizations hired licensed clinical social workers (LICSWs) as behavioral health care managers to maximize billing flexibility. Respondents reported a number of consent-related difficulties, but these were not primary barriers. Workflow changes required for billing the CoCM codes (e.g., tracking cumulative treatment minutes, once-monthly code entry) were described as arduous, but also stimulated creative solutions. Since CoCM codes incorporate the work of the psychiatric consultant into one payment to primary care, organizations employed strategies such as inter-departmental ledger transfers. When challenges arose from variations in the local payer mix, some organizations billed CoCM codes exclusively, while others elected to use a mixture of CoCM and traditional fee-for-service (FFS) codes. For most organizations, it was important to demonstrate financial sustainability from the CoCM codes. CONCLUSIONS: With deliberate planning, persistence, and widespread organizational buy-in, successful utilization of newly available FFS CoCM billing codes is achievable.

BACKGROUND: In the US, several states including New York State (NYS) have adopted Medicaid value-based payment (VBP) policies to improve healthcare quality and reduce spending. However, the impacts of these policies on vulnerable Medicaid beneficiaries with high behavioral health needs including those with serious mental illness (SMI) are unknown. AIMS OF THE STUDY: To inform policy efforts to improve the value of Medicaid-funded care by examining the early impacts of NYS's VBP policy implemented in 2017 on the quality of healthcare received by adult beneficiaries with SMI. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study to examine the association of the VBP policy with healthcare quality among adult Medicaid beneficiaries with SMI. We estimated difference-in-differences models comparing VBP-exposed and unexposed beneficiaries during the period preceding VBP implementation (2014-2016) and in 2018, a full year following implementation. Quality was assessed with 10 validated and SMI-relevant measures of mental healthcare quality (e.g., adequate Adherence to Antipsychotic Medications for Individuals with Schizophrenia, and Follow-up after Hospitalization for Mental Illness, 30-day), physical healthcare quality (e.g., Diabetes Screening for People with Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder who are using Antipsychotic Medications; Comprehensive Diabetes Care, Eye Exam), and overall healthcare quality (All-Cause Readmissions). Models for all outcomes adjusted for concurrent policies, and models for acute care measures also adjusted for need variables. RESULTS: Our diverse cohort included 172,420 person-years with SMI, with 28.5% VBP-exposed. The largest diagnostic groups were schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (42.2% and 41.3%, respectively). The VBP-exposed and unexposed beneficiaries differed on most characteristics, with the unexposed being slightly younger, less diverse, and healthier relative to the VBP-exposed. After adjusting for covariates, VBP-exposure was associated with changes in only two of the 10 quality measures compared with the VBP-unexposed group: a 1.8- percentage-point (pp) increase in adequate Adherence to Antipsychotic Medications for Individuals with Schizophrenia (95% CI, 0.5-3.2) and a 1.4-pp decrease (95% CI, -2.6 to -0.1) in Diabetes Screening for People with Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder who are using Antipsychotic Medications. DISCUSSION: A year following its implementation, a Medicaid VBP policy that involved varying degrees of provider risk-bearing had few quality impacts, one positive and one negative, among the state's beneficiaries with SMI. Our study, the first to examine VBP quality impacts with several validated measures of mental, physical, and overall healthcare quality, has some limitations, including that we cannot rule out time-varying unmeasured confounding, nor can we isolate the effects of type of risk arrangement (one-sided versus two-sided) or the mix of measures potentially associated with quality of SMI care included in the VBP contracts. Additionally, our study may not have captured the full impacts of the VBP policy due to our relatively short observation period. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICIES AND FURTHER RESEARCH: Policymakers seeking to use VBP to improve quality of SMI care may consider VBP policy features likely to facilitate achieving this goal, for example, incentives for delivering clinically integrated care and inclusion in contracts of SMI-relevant quality measures. Future studies should be designed to confirm and extend our findings.

BACKGROUND: Despite the risk of negative sequelae from opioid use disorder (OUD) and clinical guidelines for the use of effective medication treatment for OUD (M-OUD), many Veterans Health Administration (VHA) providers and facilities lag in providing M-OUD. An intensive external facilitation intervention may enhance uptake in low-adopting VHA facilities by engaging stakeholders from multiple clinical settings within a facility (e.g., mental health, primary care, pain specialty clinic, substance use disorder clinics). Our study identified pre-intervention determinants of implementation through qualitative interviews, described strategies employed during the first 6 months of intensive external facilitation, and explored patterns of implementation determinants in relation to early outcomes. METHODS: Guided by the integrated-Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework, we interviewed stakeholders at low-adopting VHA facilities prior to external facilitation, employed a rapid qualitative analytic process, presented findings during facility visits, and collaboratively created facilitation action plans to achieve goals set by the facilities that would increase M-OUD uptake. The primary outcome was the Substance Use Disorder (SUD)-16, which is a VHA facility-level performance metric consisting of the percent of patients receiving M-OUD among those with an OUD diagnosis. We examined the relationship between pre-implementation factors and 6-month SUD-16 outcomes. RESULTS: Across eight VHA facilities, we interviewed 68 participants. Implementation determinants included barriers and facilitators across innovation, context, and recipients constructs of i-PARIHS. Each facility selected goals based on the qualitative results. At 6 months, two facilities achieved most goals and two facilities demonstrated progress. The SUD-16 from baseline to 6 months significantly improved in two facilities (8.4% increase (95 % confidence interval [CI] 4.4-12.4) and 9.9% increase (95% CI 3.6-16.2), respectively). Six-month implementation outcomes showed that the extent to which M-OUD aligns with existing clinical practices and values was a primary factor at all facilities, with six of eight facilities perceiving it as both a barrier and facilitator. External health system barriers were most challenging for facilities with the smallest change in SUD-16. CONCLUSIONS: Early impacts of a multi-faceted implementation approach demonstrated a strong signal for positively impacting M-OUD prescribing in low-adopting VHA facilities. This signal indicates that external facilitation can influence adoption of M-OUD at the facility level in the early implementation phase. These short-term wins experienced by stakeholders may encourage continued adoption and long-term sustainability M-OUD.

Few primary care patients are screened for substance use. As part of a phased feasibility study examining the implementation of electronic health record-integrated screening with the Tobacco, Alcohol, and Prescription Medication Screening (TAPS) Tool and clinical decision support (CDS) in rural primary care clinics, focus groups were conducted to identify early indicators of success and challenges to screening implementation. Method: Focus groups (n = 6) were conducted with medical assistants (MAs: n = 3: 19 participants) and primary care providers (PCPs: n = 3: 13 participants) approximately one month following screening implementation in three Federally Qualified Health Centers in Maine. Rapid analysis and matrix analysis using Proctor's Taxonomy of Implementation Outcomes were used to explore implementation outcomes. Results: There was consensus that screening is being used, but use of the CDS was lower, in part due to limited positive screens. Fidelity was high among MAs, though discomfort with the CDS surfaced among PCPs, impacting adoption and fidelity. The TAPS Tool's content, credibility and ease of workflow integration were favorably assessed. Challenges include screening solely at annual visits and self-administered screening for certain patients. Conclusions: Results reveal indicators of implementation success and strategies to address challenges to screening for substance use in primary care.

Background: Few primary care patients are screened for substance use. As part of a phased feasibility study examining the implementation of electronic health record-integrated screening with the Tobacco, Alcohol, and Prescription Medication Screening (TAPS) Tool and clinical decision support (CDS) in rural primary care clinics, focus groups were conducted to identify early indicators of success and challenges to screening implementation. Method: Focus groups (n = 6) were conducted with medical assistants (MAs: n = 3: 19 participants) and primary care providers (PCPs: n = 3: 13 participants) approximately one month following screening implementation in three Federally Qualified Health Centers in Maine. Rapid analysis and matrix analysis using Proctor's Taxonomy of Implementation Outcomes were used to explore implementation outcomes. Results: There was consensus that screening is being used, but use of the CDS was lower, in part due to limited positive screens. Fidelity was high among MAs, though discomfort with the CDS surfaced among PCPs, impacting adoption and fidelity. The TAPS Tool's content, credibility and ease of workflow integration were favorably assessed. Challenges include screening solely at annual visits and self-administered screening for certain patients. Conclusions: Results reveal indicators of implementation success and strategies to address challenges to screening for substance use in primary care.