Integrated Primary and Behavioral Care Role in Medical Homes and Chronic Disease Management

This timely analysis spotlights the concepts and possibilities of the Patient-Centered Medical Home for bringing mental health and other specialties into primary care. Overview chapters present the Patient-Centered Medical Home model, emphasizing how such systems are organized to solve widespread problems with accessibility, affordability, efficiency, and safety. Practitioner roles, boundaries, and opportunities plus applications are clarified, as well as staffing, financial, and technological challenges. And the section on applications describe care models for special populations, such as comprehensive services to the seriously mentally ill and behavioral services to patients with chronic health conditions.

Included in the coverage:

• Integrated care and specialty behavioral health care in the patient-centered medical home.
• Training the behavioral health workforce for the patient-centered medical home.
• The importance of stepped care protocols for the redesign of behavioral health care in patient-centered medical homes.
• Depression management in the medical home.
• Treating obesity in a primary care setting.
• Integrating behavioral health in the pediatric medical home.

For health and clinical psychologists, primary care and family physicians, and public health professionals, Integrated Primary and Behavioral Care represents the potential for an exciting new frontier in primarycare reform.