Integrated care and specialty behavioral health care in the patient-centered medical home

Abstract

Integrated health care represents the contemporary recognition that holistic, whole-person, and patient-centered medical home (PCMH) services are effective in terms of improved treatment outcomes for mental health (MH), substance abuse, and physical illness, as well as more cost-effective for both patients and health-care systems. These benefits are obtained, for instance, through a reduction in expensive emergency department visits and overutilization of health-care services in service delivery settings with integrated physical health primary care (PC) and behavioral health services. In fact, evidence suggests that the myriad benefits of integrated care (IC) models, and more specifically, PCMH models encompass additional positive outcomes including increased consumer satisfaction, decreased provider burnout, increased access to care, improved patient adherence to treatment recommendations, and reduced stigma toward accessing behavioral health care. Recent federal efforts toward health-care reform including policy changes such as those enacted through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as systems change reforms like PCMHs, dovetail nicely with the major paradigmatic shifts in health-care service conceptualization and provision occurring throughout PC and behavioral health.