“Integrated health care” is a hot topic these days. But what does it mean? Simply put, integrated health care recognizes the benefit of patients receiving medical, dental and behavioral or mental health care at the same time in the same place. After all, ailments don’t necessarily stick to one field. Community Health Centers (CHCs) in Colorado are on the forefront of re-envisioning what health care can be, and all of them focus on providing integrated health care to their patients.
Recently providers as Salud Family Health Centers (Salud), a CHC with clinic locations in northeastern Colorado, wrote a short article about their model of integrating behavioral health into their overall care model for the National Association of Community Health Centers’ Community Health Forum Magazine. With 20 full-time behavioral health providers on staff, Salud can incorporate behavioral health into every patient visit. The most notable part about Salud’s model, say authors Katrin Seifert, PsyD, Jonathan Muther, PhD, and Tillman Farley, MD, is that “it is not primarily consultative. Salud’s behavioral health providers do not have to wait for a consult request from the medical provider, but rather they can see anyone at any time.”
This integrated model of care worked for Maria, a Spanish-speaking Salud patient who visited a Salud clinic complaining of persistent headaches and fatigue. With Salud’s integrated behavioral health model, her first primary care appointment began with a visit from a bi-lingual behavioral health therapist who let Maria know this is a standard for all patients at Salud.
The initial behavioral health evaluation allowed the care team to explain how stress can sometimes be linked to emotional as well as physical symptoms – such as headaches and fatigue. By starting this conversation, Maria’s care team was able to learn about recent events that were causing Maria to experience abnormal amounts of stress, and they were able to offer Maria the best advice for resolving and improving her physical and mental health.
You can read more about Maria and the integrated care teams at Salud here. And if you’re interested in putting your skills to use in an integrated team of health care professionals at a CHC, search for a job in your field on the CHAMPS Job Board, or check out all of Salud’s open opportunities here.
