Integrated Behavioral Health Services: Enhance Your Psychiatric Health Care for Patients

There are several goals of integrative behavioral healthcare:

• Shorten time to comprehensively care for the patient
• Provide additional support for patients to improve their health outcomes
• Provide care to behavioral issues that will impact their physical health outcomes
• Decrease the cost for patients to help obtain improved health outcomes
• Help address the mental health provider shortage by expanding access to care
• Address social determinants of health that can effect your health outcomes

Integrated mental health means an attempt to combine behavioral health services when needed with primary care and/ or specialty care services to comprehensively help the patient in an ambulatory or inpatient setting. 

Integrated behavioral health addresses the patients well being since a healthy mind as well as a body are important to achieving positive health outcomes since your behavioral health can effect your physical health.

Integrated behavioral health expands access to care, cuts the cost for care, shortens the time someone needs to receive care, helps address the mental health shortage and helps and most importantly improves the overall health outcomes since behavioral health can impact physical health which provides comprehensive care for the patient.

Behavioral health includes mental health. Behavioral health relates to how your mind, body and spirit effects your behavior which in turn affects your physical and mental health.

Behavioral health conditions include eating disorders, ADHD, Autism, Asperger’s syndrome and a wide array of addictions such as: sex, gambling, shopping, drugs and alcohol. These conditions stem from a pattern of destructive behavior that can last several months or longer.

Behavioral health services may help a patient overcome these behaviors.

Mental health conditions are disorders that affect how a person handles stress, relates to others, thinks or acts.

A behavioral health condition is affected by the outside world or sociological factors. Whereas, a mental illness has internal physiological or psychological factors as the dominant reason for these issues.

Key elements for providing successful integrated care is to have the health care entities commitment with a designated leadership team and team members with processes put in place to achieve successful team based outcomes. 

Integrating mental health care into primary care allows a patient to be treated as the whole patient when needed.

Integrative care combines treatments between medical and behavioral health providers and care teams in a team based approach to  help the whole patient.

Integrating behavioral health care with primary care allows for better overall health outcomes in a shorter period of time.

Allowing a primary care provider to have the support of a psychiatrist to consult with and behavioral health therapists to help improve the patients mental health helps improve care at the time it is discovered with the primary care provider and allows them to better help their patients and the care management team to support them to bill for behavioral health integration services gives the patient the additional support/ coaching they need to help them stay on track and help improve their mental health. Therefore, patients do not have to wait weeks or months to start receiving support with their mental health issues and can start receiving care at the time this illness presents. This can effectively improve the outcomes for the patient in a much shorter time than since there is a mental health professional shortage, too.

Integrated behavioral health care is commonly referred to as “behavioral health integration,” “BHI”, “collaborative care,” “integrated care”  or “primary care behavioral health.”