Integrating physical health: What were the costs to behavioral health care clinics?

Abstract

Costs of integrating physical care services are not trivial to mental health clinics, and may pose a barrier to widespread adoption. Provision of limited health monitoring services is less expensive for clinics, but generates proportionally large non-clinical costs than health physicals. The relative health impact of this more limited approach is an important area for future study. Also, shifting reimbursement to include health care coordination time may improve program sustainability.

Integrated care effectiveness for adults with co-occurring disorders

“…Additionally, most integrated care studies examine models which incorporate behavioral health services into primary care settings; less is known about the effectiveness of models which integrate primary care services into behavioral health settings (Gerrity et al, 2014). Yet many of the barriers to successful integration such as physical space, staffing, technology and financial reimbursement (Connor et al, 2017;Kaehne et al, 2017;Schmidt Hackbarth, 2015;Hinde, 2019) are more pronounced when targeting persons with behavioral health diagnoses, given the need for additional privacy regulations and specialty staff. To address these gaps in the literature, the current study explored whether integrating primary care services into a behavioral clinic setting reduced ED utilization for persons with multiple morbidities including MI, SMI, SUD and chronic physical conditions.…”

“…Integrated care models promote access and improve physical health (Connor et al, 2017;Druss et al, 2016), increase preventive care, improve health outcomes, reduce costs and decrease hospital use (Chen et al, 2019;Druss, 2010;Hinde, 2019;Wells et al, 2019). Furthermore, these models are perceived as impactful and desirable amongst persons with social and mental health concerns (Mantler and Wolfe, 2018).…”

Exploring Support Provided by Community Managed Organisations to Address Health Risk Behaviours Associated with Chronic Disease among People with Mental Health Conditions: A Qualitative Study with Organisational Leaders

“…Research exploring care provision addressing health risk behaviours within CMOs for consumers with mental health conditions has been limited by: (1) focusing on physical health broadly (i.e., encompassing all health from minor ailments through to chronic diseases such as cancer, with no specific focus on health risk behaviours) ( [12][13][14][15]); (2) focusing on one health risk behaviour only [16,17]; (3) combining results for CMO-delivered and public mental health services [18][19][20][21]; and (4) combining results for populations of individuals with and without mental health conditions [22,23]. Outside of Australia, no research to the authors knowledge has explored the care being provided by CMOs to address multiple health risk behaviours among consumers with mental health conditions.…”

Review and Evaluation of the Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and Homelessness Grant Formulas

“…The reports require certification by a certified public accountant and thus are generally of high quality. Information from these reports, which to our knowledge is only available for New York State, could be useful for understanding variations across service sites in specific components of operating costs(Connor et al, 2017). The limitations of the CFR data are that they are only available for New York and that the estimates of the proportion of costs attributed to the different input components may not be representative of the nation.…”