Preliminary outcomes from an integrated mental health primary care team

The effects of establishing a multidisciplinary mental health primary care team in a Veterans Affairs internal medicine primary care clinic were evaluated. The multidisciplinary team worked in collaboration with primary care providers to evaluate and treat their patients, who had a wide variety of psychiatric disorders, in the primary care clinic. In the first year of operation preliminary outcomes indicated that the rate of referrals to specialty mental health care dropped from 38 percent to 14 percent. The mean number of appointments with the team for evaluation and stabilization was 2.5. These outcomes suggest that a multidisciplinary mental health primary care team can rapidly evaluate and stabilize patients with a wide range of psychiatric disorders, reduce the number of referrals to specialty mental health care, and improve collaborative care.