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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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Changing Physician Roles and Relationships in Integrated Care
Unacceptably high mortality and morbidity among people with serious mental illness have prompted a call to action for behavioral health providers from all disciplines. Included among these providers are physicians and other prescribers, who have an important part to play in the integration...
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Care Management Model for Integrated Settings
The Care Management model in an integrated health care setting is rapidly evolving and expanding. Although there have been many improvements in coordination of health care, barriers persist for patients and medical providers which diminish the quality of care being delivered. Primary health care...
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Building an Integrated Healthcare System: Blending Public Health and Prevention Models
The very first time I ever thought about physical and behavioral healthcare together was when I heard of a psychiatrist who wanted to do complete blood chemistry before prescribing medication to new patients within a mental health clinic, a unique situation some 20 years ago. Clearly, this...
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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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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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Sleep Issues: An Opportunity for Integrated Care
Who should take the lead when issues of sleep problems come up? Is the sleep problem a physical or a behavioral health issue? If a client only has diabetes, there is no question that the lead in the integrated team needs to be the primary care provider (PCP) or endocrinologist. If a person only has...
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The Pathway to Integrating the Healthcare System: Integrated Licensure and Health Homes
New York’s Medicaid program serves over 5 million enrollees with a broad array of health care needs and challenges. The Medicaid program serves many population groups with complex medical, behavioral, and long-term care needs that drive a significant volume of high cost services including...
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Population Health: Transforming Health Care to Improve Our Health
As the debate about improving health in the United States wages on, it turns out that only 10 percent of our health status and longevity, experts declare, derives from health care. What Makes Us Sick? As the Determinants of Health pie chart reveals (see page 36), it is our behaviors, our habits...
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One Mental Health Clinic’s Journey into Integrated Care
We have heard the statistic countless times over the past few years, yet they are still shocking. People with serious mental illness will die, on average, 25 years sooner than the general population. WJCS, like many mental health providers, has predominantly focused on the area of the human body...
