The Primary Care Toolkit

Download or read book The Primary Care Toolkit written by Larry James and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-16 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrated care is receiving a lot of attention from clinicians, administrators, policy makers, and researchers. Given the current healthcare crises in the United States, where costs, quality, and access to care are of particular concern, many are looking for new and better ways of delivering behavioral health services. Integrating behavioral health into primary care medical settings has been shown to: (1) produce healthier patients; (2) produce medical savings; (3) produce higher patient satisfaction; (4) leverage the primary care physician’s time so that they can be more productive; and (5) increase physician satisfaction. For these reasons this is an emerging paradigm with a lot of interest and momentum. For example, the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recently endorsed redesigning the mental health system so that much of this is integrated into primary care medicine.