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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 Challenges of Integrated Health Care
One of the most talked about issues in both the behavioral health and medical field is the integration of behavioral and physical health services. In fact, SAMHSA has reworked their definition of recovery to include physical health: A process through which individuals improve their health and...
