A Learning Behavioral Health Care System: Opportunities to Enhance Research

Sweeping changes in health care financing combined with the increased use of technology across health care systems are making it possible to address long-standing challenges to the behavioral health services delivery system. This Open Forum outlines opportunities and challenges facing health services researchers in this rapidly changing landscape. Inspired by a 2012 report by the Institute of Medicine, the authors discuss innovative research endeavors, promising study designs, and challenges involved in integrating high-impact behavioral health services research within a learning behavioral health care framework. The Open Forum concludes with a discussion of the critical next steps in this process: building consensus around common metrics for high-quality care, relevant outcomes, and contextual factors; connecting researchers to community and clinical settings; creating a data commons to pool information across sites; and designing and evaluating evidence-based decision support tools to drive improved care and outcomes.