Opportunities for Occupational Therapy Behavioral Health: A Call to Action

Abstract

As the Affordable Care Act is implemented, occupational therapy practitioners must work to ensure that the essential benefits offered by state insurance exchanges include rehabilitation, habilitation, mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral treatment services.

Ordeals of Sexually Violated Women and Access to Comprehensive Healthcare: A Case Study of Victims of Sexual Violence in North Kivu, Eastern Congo

“…All this ensures that when patients know their state of health, they will be likely to be hopeful, optimistic, and trust that the challenges can be overcome; and thus improve their health. After all, the restoration of a person is built on their strengths, coping skills, resources and inherent values 23 .…”

Telehealth and Occupational Therapy: Integral to the Triple Aim of Health Care Reform

“…Occupational therapy practitioners can contribute to early mobilization programs to mitigate secondary complications and fall risks in the hos-pital and identify environmental supports and modifications, including dischargerelated home assessment and patient education to prevent unnecessary hospital readmission (Fisher & Friesema, 2013). Other areas of population health promotion for which occupational therapy practitioners' skills are valued include patient activation for self-management of chronic diseases, behavioral health and implementation of depression screening programs, care coordination, and development of health and wellness plans in conjunction with primary health care providers (AOTA, n.d.-b;Roberts & Robinson, 2014;Stoffel, 2013).…”

“…We must take action to fulfill our potential in service of these larger needs by articulating the distinct value of occupational therapy and the evidence supporting our expertise in these nontraditional practice settings. Stoffel (2013) issued a call to action for occupational therapy practitioners to "collaborate closely with behavioral health professions, advocacy groups, and the community to ensure that quality essential services include the expertise of occupational therapy practitioners" (p. 144). We must take this call to action even further.…”

Population Health and Occupational Therapy

“…Since that time, most of the articles published in the column have directly discussed connections between occupational therapy and the Triple Aim. Examples of these discussions have included • Primary care and value-based payment (Leland, Crum, Phipps, Roberts, & Gage, 2015;Stoffel, 2013) • The role of healthy habits and occupational therapy's role in wellness and prevention as a strategy to maintain its relevance (Hildenbrand & Lamb, 2013;Persch, Lamb, Metzler, & Fristad, 2015) • New models of interdisciplinary team practice and a vision of health care as "a coordinated system built on teams of professionals with many capabilities and varied scopes of practice all focused on achieving health" (Metzler, Hartmann, & Lowenthal, 2012, p. 267;Moyers & Metzler, 2014) • Increased use of information technologies supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and telehealth (Cason, 2015;Moyers & Metzler, 2014) • The Triple Aim and client centeredness as providing "a compass for future research demonstrating occupational therapy's value through improved outcomes for health care recipients, increased efficiency of care transitions and prevention of hospital readmissions, and cost-effectiveness of interventions and programs when effectively and efficiently provided on the basis of best practice" (Lamb & Metzler, 2014, p. 9;Mroz, Pitonyak, Fogelberg, & Leland, 2015) • Evidence and promotion of the distinct value of occupational therapy (Arbesman, Lieberman, & Metzler, 2014). One of the three pillars of the Triple Aim is to improve the overall health of the population.…”