Introduction The Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) recognizes the utility and potential for Measurement Based Care (MBC) as a core feature of high-quality integrated healthcare. MBC supports optimal clinical practice, demonstrates the value of integrated care teams, and improves outcomes. MBC is much more than simply administering behavioral health measures. Rather, it is an evidence-based, […]
Howard Thurman, a spiritual founder of the civil rights movement once wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” His words challenge us to resist stagnation, conformity, and systems that stifle our ability to effect meaningful change. […]
I’m going to make an argument here that the antidote to political uncertainty and rapid change in the healthcare landscape is community, particularly local community. And in so doing I’m also tying us to a promise that this community, the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA), will be a nexus of moral strength and innovation for […]
If you are a clinician you know the feeling. It’s that moment in a care process with a patient where you could do more or choose to do less. You battle internally to decide what to do and ultimately you know you can’t live with yourself if you choose to do less. That’s our moment as […]
Tracing our Professional Lineage Years ago, I attended a gathering where the late family therapist Lynn Hoffman illustrated a colleague’s professional lineage by mapping out the influential figures in their career in a family tree format, like a genogram. Her friend and colleague Marcelo Pakman, a regular to these reunions, coined this exploration a “retroscope.” […]
3 minute read I was not ready to negotiate my first, “big boy” salary. Until that point, my pay rates were all decided by policies (e.g., minimum wage, graduate student stipends, teenager allowance). I didn’t have the moxie, or matching clothes, to negotiate. Growing up, salary talk was off the table, quite literally. My parents […]
By Neftali Serrano, PsyD, 2 Minute Read In recent years, the struggle to retain and recruit behavioral health providers has intensified within primary care. A closer examination of this trend reveals a significant underlying cause: the selection bias rooted in the mental health provider training process. This bias not only shapes the career preferences of […]
5 minute read The behavioral health field is failing to fulfill one of its essential social roles. Our main function is to help people resolve behavioral health issues, but our longstanding inability to make care accessible diminishes our social value. This is an issue of equity. People should be able to access behavioral care as […]
5 minute read A Provocative Question Recently, I attended a session on healthcare workforce development at the Arizona State of Reform conference in Phoenix. The State of Reform is a national organization that facilitates healthcare policy meetings across the country. This session focused on problems and opportunities related to healthcare workforce in Arizona. During the […]
4 minute read In our first blog post on March 3rd, 2023, we reported on efforts by the Primary Care Behavioral Health Special Interest Group (PCBH SIG) to advance the understanding of screening and outcome measurement in demonstrating the value of the integrated model of service delivery. Since that time a Measurement-Based Care (MBC) workgroup […]
4 minute read When it comes to health insurance, we often forget about the importance of mental health coverage. But the reality is that accessing mental health services can be a daunting task. Limited coverage and difficulty reaching behavioral health care services can leave people feeling helpless and trapped in a cycle of poor mental […]
5 minute read On July 13, 2023, Health Federation of Philadelphia (HFP) announced a new investment in integrated care by the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS), which will allow HFP to hire a Director of Behavioral Health Integration position. The new Director will be responsible for leading all training and […]
4 minute read Whole person care means that people have access to both physical and behavioral healthcare. Unfortunately, there is no parity for such treatments by payers here in the United States. Payers intentionally limit their coverage of behavioral healthcare. But now the Biden administration wants to see that change. Yesterday, the Biden administration proposed […]
Riddle me this: I am a system that is active and essential in healthcare, but a complete mystery to most healthcare professionals. Answer: a patient attribution system! Hopefully you did not peek at the title of my post. Did you get the right answer? Don’t worry if you did not guess a patient attribution system. […]
Three years ago the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) set out to report on the spread of integrated care across the United States primary care system. Our initial report on findings in 2020 elicited interesting findings on the breadth and types of care being provided. Here we provided updated data which appears to demonstrate greater […]
5 Minute Read Family medicine residency programs have long had behaviorists as part of the educational experience for physicians-in-training, but the role has not kept up with the many changes in training and healthcare over the last few decades. And so you have behavioral science faculty with unclear and often conflicting mandates for their work, […]
Maybe one of the only positives of the COVID-19 pandemic has been an increase in attention to the long-standing crisis in behavioral health and the movement to address the systemic barriers which prevent people from getting care. President Biden has announced a national strategy to address the mental health crisis. The Department of Health and […]
5 minute read Once upon a time, I was a behavioral medicine director at a family medicine clinic in North Carolina. Part of my job was to monitor the patient waiting list. We had normal delays like confirmation of benefits and no appointment slots. My goal was to schedule new patient appointments within 1-2 weeks […]
