Collaborative Care: Integrating Behavioral Health Into the Primary Care Setting

Integrated behavioral health is a model of health care that aims to meet the complex health care needs of patients in primary care settings. Collaborative Care (CC) is an evidence-based model incorporating an interdisciplinary team to improve outcomes for behavioral health disorders commonly seen by primary care providers.

CC was implemented in a nurse-managed health center in a medically underserved community of Chicago with a team of family nurse practitioners, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and a licensed clinical social worker.

Integration of the CC model required restructuring of the patient visit, the care team, and financial operations. Weekly team meetings were held for interdisciplinary case consultation and training for the primary care team by the psychiatric nurse practitioner. The model includes suggested goals of reducing patient scores of validated depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) and anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7) screening tools to a score less than 5 points or to less than 50% of original score.

During the initial year of implementation, 166 patients received care under the CC model, with 64 patients currently receiving active care. In this cohort, 22% reached suggested goals for depression and 47% for anxiety.

CC has benefits for both patients and providers. Patients receive holistic treatment of both mental and physical health needs and access to psychiatric services for medication initiation and behavioral health modalities when necessary. We observed that the CC model improved collaboration with behavioral health specialists and the competence and confidence of family nurse practitioners.