Self-Assessment in Behavioral Health Integration

Where is your practice in the process of implementing integrated health?

You’ve heard about the importance of behavioral health care. You know about the evidence suggesting that behavioral health issues can be just as disabling as heart disease and cancer in terms of loss of productivity and mortality. You see the benefits of behavioral health integration and want to expand your practice to give your patients access to the care they need.

Great! So, what’s next?

For many clinics, thinking about how to achieve behavioral health integration can be an intimidating task. There are many things to consider. How will BHI affect workflow at my clinic? What about the overhead? Will I have to hire new staff? How can we effectively begin to deliver these services to our patients?

If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of moving towards behavioral health integration, a great place to start is to assess how ready your clinic is to begin offering behavioral health care. Assessing readiness will help you to set achievable goals for your clinic by identifying gaps in what you currently provide.

Many practices are already taking steps to incorporate behavioral health into the services that they offer, even if they aren’t aware of it. Some questions you can ask yourself:

·       Do you currently promote mental wellness?

·       Do you currently see patients with BH issues such as anxiety, depression, and/or substance use?

·       Do you provide patients with BH issues with references or resources related to mental healh and substance use?

·       Do you routinely ask patients to fill out Patient Health Questionnaires, such as the PHQ-9, GAD-7, PHQ-2, EPDS, etc.?

·       Do you have partnerships in place for timely referrals?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have already begun to integrate behavioral health into your practice. While there are still more steps to take, understanding what you are already doing to promote wellness will help you to identify areas to improve, and what your next steps may be.

If you are ready to take the next step towards integrating behavioral health at your practice, Germane and Wise can help. Our collaborative care model takes the much of the work of integrating behavioral health off your shoulders, so you have more time to focus on your patients’ wellness. Give us a call today to hear more about how we can help your practice achieve its goals of integrated behavioral health.