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The Promise and Peril of Value Based Behavioral Health Care
By aligning payment with value, we can achieve the triple aim of better outcomes and better experience of the healthcare system at a lower cost IF we define value in terms of wellness, recovery and improved quality of life. In this case as with almost everything in our healthcare system today, the...
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A New Face on Familiar Trends
Last year I attended a conference at which Dr. Michael Hogan, the former Commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health, delivered a keynote address on emerging issues and trends within health care reform. He distilled a seemingly inchoate mass of movements, mandates and initiatives...
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From Neighboring Institutions to Collaborators: A Joint Effort to Improve Integrated Care
The integration of primary and behavioral health has become a major focus of healthcare restructuring across the country in the past several decades. New partnerships, emerging from a historically siloed system, share the triple aim of improving health status, containing costs and enhancing service...
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Building a Quality Behavioral Health Workforce: Employing Service-User Perspectives Throughout Your Organization
With the introduction of Managed Behavioral Health Care in October of 2015 and the soon to be implemented Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), engagement of “peers” in the workforce has become a topic of considerable interest. HCBS introduces peer support as a Medicaid billable service...
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Effective Supervision: An Essential Component to Enhancing Consumer Outcomes
The behavioral healthcare industry is facing a monumental time of change. The mental health field in particular is faced with putting more responsibility on consumers to drive their own treatment. No longer, it seems, will a person with mental health challenges be cared for in a prescriptive, or...
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Looking Ahead: The Future of Behavioral Health
Integrated care that aims to treat the whole person, including addiction, mental health and primary care needs, is changing the landscape of healthcare. These changes are ushering in a new era for addictions professionals. The New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (NYS...
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More Than Just a Change in Title: New Statewide Effort Supports the Move from Case Management to Care Management
How does one move from working as a Case Manager to a successful Care Manager? The change in title is simply the exchange of one letter, the ‘s’ for an ‘r’. However, the change from one role to the other is not so simple. It’s been almost five years since New York State instituted...
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The Emerging Role of Nursing in the Delivery of Psychiatric Care
Although we have always known that mind and body are connected, there is now increased understanding that mental and physical health are closely intertwined. Recent studies indicate an interaction between symptoms of mood and anxiety with exercise, diet, and overall health, as well as chronic...
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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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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...
