WIHI: The Road to Team-Based Primary Care and Behavioral Health

Date: ​December 4, 2014

Featuring:

• Ed Wagner, MD, MPH, Director Emeritus, MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation; Senior Investigator, Group Health Research Institute
• Robin Henderson, PsyD, Chief Behavioral Health Officer and Vice President, Strategic Integration, St. Charles Health System (Bend, Oregon)
• Parinda Khatri, PhD, Chief Clinical Officer, Cherokee Health Systems (Knoxville, Tennessee)
• Mara Laderman, MSPH, Senior Research Associate, IHI

Primary care practices across the US are facing a number of important challenges right now; prominent among them is doing a much better job at recognizing and helping patients with behavioral health issues. The operative term for this is “integration” — a notion that ranges from, at minimum, co-locating behavioral health services and counselors in primary care settings; to, at best, everyone on staff having greater training and skills to detect and address the mental health and behavioral challenges that may be impacting a patient’s health. And, together as a clinical team, working with patients on "whole person" solutions.

Achieving this level of capacity doesn’t happen overnight, and we discussed why it’s an essential aim on this WIHI. This topic is also the focus of the IHI Collaborative, Optimize Primary Care Teams to Meet Patients' Medical AND Behavioral Needs.