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Substance Use and Mental Health Services at a Crossroads
Behavioral health services must be strengthened to meet community needs. All too often, people with substance use and mental health disorders do not get the help they need. Behavioral health services are not available on-demand across New York State. A comprehensive continuum of prevention,...
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A New Model for Integration of Care: The Ambulatory ICU
Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMH) are built upon access, communication, continuity and ongoing performance improvement. Health Homes have been most successful in engaging marginalized difficult patients with little primary care utilization but falter when successful treatment requires care by...
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Insurance Models to Achieve the Triple Aim
Most people think that the reason for bringing behavioral health services under managed care—a “carve-in”—is to save money. They’re partially right. Carving in services has resulted in savings for the Medicaid program and for States in many instances. In a carve-in, behavioral health...
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A New Approach to Service Integration and Variation on a Proven Theme
Policy developments within federal, state and local governments are compelling providers to pursue the “Triple Aim” of healthcare reform and to continually reevaluate their systems and services to this end. Notwithstanding the complexities of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Delivery System...
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Integrated Care at Last?
This issue of Behavioral Health News is devoted to current efforts to integrate care for people with behavioral health conditions. So many complex mechanisms are being created that I get lost in the maze of confusing names and acronyms. “Health home”, “medical home”, “HARP”,...
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Trauma-Informed Care Leads to More Integrated Care
Our inattention to the emotional dimensions of health and illness is a public health perfect storm, especially for the mentally ill. This group of people experiences high rates of illness, suffers greatly, uses an enormous amount of our precious healthcare dollars, and dies 25 years earlier than...
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Integration on a Continuum: Models for Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Health Care
In the recent years of Medicaid Redesign in New York State, community-based mental health agencies who serve persons with serious and complex psychiatric conditions have addressed the evolving transformation of health care in a variety of ways. Much of the response has been reactive, with agencies...
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Opportunities for Improved Services with Integrated Care
The key component of integrated care – coordination of primary and behavioral health services in a way that is accessible from one place – is not a new concept for many substance abuse treatment organizations, such as Odyssey House in New York City, that operate Article 28 licensed medical and...
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Super Storm Sandy is Over but the Problems Are Not: A Creative Community-Based Integrated Health Care Initiative
The Staten Island Mental Health Society, Inc. (SIMHS as lead agency) and Community Health Action of Staten Island (CHASI) partnered, in April 2014, to form a Mobile Integrated Health Team (MIHT) to provide in-home health and mental health services to Staten Island residents still suffering the...
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The NYSPA Parity Enforcement Project: New Tools for Patients and Providers in The Fight Against Parity
The passage of the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) represented a landmark moment for those fighting for parity in behavioral health benefits. In the years since MHPAEA and its implementing regulations went into effect, many of the financial restrictions and...
