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Integration: Some Progress and a Need for More
Every contact with a medical provider is an opportunity to help someone address their addiction. And so, it is important for everyone who works in a healthcare setting to recognize addiction, understand the neurobiology, know the standard treatments and be familiar with the resources available...
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Integrating Primary Care into Assertive Community Treatment
The great health disparities and poor health outcomes experienced by people with serious mental illness are even more significant for the people served by Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams. Individuals are eligible for ACT services if they have been hospitalized more than four times in the...
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Evaluation of a Continuum-Based Framework for Behavioral Health Integration in Small Primary Care Practices
Introducing behavioral health services into small primary care settings enhances patient-centered care and provides higher-quality care and greater treatment options for patients with behavioral health conditions such as depression and anxiety. For small practices already facing the burden of...
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The Critical Role of Relationships in Integrated Health Care Delivery
Integrated care models are now increasingly being adopted across all medical settings, including behavioral health. Their potential to help health care systems attain the triple aim of improving service quality, promoting population health and reducing costs has led policy makers to incentivize...
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Integrating Health and Behavioral Health: Consider All the Dimensions
A discussion of integrated care should actually start by redefining the term itself. Integrated care is commonly considered the weaving together of physical and behavioral health, but experience has shown that this definition limits the discussion to two dimensions. What dimension is missing? What...
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The Behavioral Health Sector and Physical Health Services Models
Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) are known to have significant co-morbid medical conditions and as such greater medical costs though only a tiny fraction of that overall costs can be attributed directly to mental health services.1 It is well established that approximately 50% of total...
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Reimagining Integrated Care: Why Social Interventions are Vital in Providing Support for People with Serious Mental Illness
The concept of “integrated healthcare” has been regarded as an optimal treatment approach for individuals experiencing co-occurring mental and physical illnesses. Twenty years ago, Fountain House – the most widely replicated evidence-based community model for people living with mental illness...
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Integrated Psychiatry for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities
Use of psychotropic drugs for individuals with developmental disabilities is common practice. For example, Jobski, Hofer, Hoffman, and Bachmann (2016) documented an overall median use of psychotropic drugs in 45.7% of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Wink et al., (2018) documented...
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Integrated Health Care for Older Adults: A Model Partnership
When Sonia was discharged from New York-Presbyterian (NYP) hospital last winter her Care Coordinator arranged for home care, meals, nurse visits, transportation, medical equipment and prescriptions. She went home confident that she would be safe and would receive ongoing care at home as she...
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Integrating Peers within Behavioral Health Programs
The implementation of peer support professionals throughout the behavioral health field has proven to be a valuable resource for clients, patients, and service providers across the continuum (SAMHSA, Value of Peers, 2017). Whether it be in an outpatient clinic, emergency room, or community setting,...
