5 Minute Read There is no single issue in the movement to integrate physical and behavioral health system that trumps the workforce shortage and training problem. Primary care needs a moonshot initiative to bridge that gap. I have some ideas. They are mine alone – I can’t speak for all of the Collaborative Family Healthcare […]
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 […]
3 minute read. Original post available here Returning to the PCBH (Primary Care Behavioral Health) world after a week off is always an exciting, yet frightening experience. My mind always worries when returning to clinical work. “Will I still be able to do this?” “Do I still got what it takes?” And, then, all that doubt […]
Five minute read The title of this post is a terrible pick-up line, but it reflects my musings on how we identify patients in primary care who may benefit from behavioral health services. Health screening is standard practice in primary care. We screen for physical health, mental health, substance use, health behaviors, family functioning, social […]
5 Min Read. Filling that integrated care position at your clinic feel tough? You are not alone. Positions for mental health professionals of all types in primary care have grown in the last few years (see our job board and our map) and the options for mental health professionals have also expanded with telehealth uptake, […]
There are many good reasons for the strain and experience of burnout among healthcare professionals at-large and primary care teams specifically, but there may be a hidden factor affecting your integrated behavioral health staff that you may not have yet considered: role diffusion. The shorthand version for this phenomenon is, “your staff is trying to […]
3 minute read I am a little late to the game on this 2021 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. But my tardiness does not diminish the appeal of the ideas that jump off the 428-pages of this document. These ideas, if implemented, would terraform the primary care landscape. A reliable […]
Five Minute Read We were curious about how our members utilize social media and connectivity tools, so we asked and they answered. The results are fascinating and will help us plan future efforts to support networking amongst the members of our association, the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA). Why should you care? Well, read on […]
Five Minute Read Operating as a behavioral health consultant (BHC) in primary care has always demanded flexibility but never more so than during the pandemic. Things have changed significantly and it’s worthwhile for us to reflect on those changes, not with resistance, but simply with acknowledgment and mindfulness about what those changes mean. So, this […]
Our community is a rarity in the healthcare world. We do not represent a guild. We do not represent a sector of the healthcare industry. We do not represent a disease category. We represent an idea. That idea is that healthcare works best when professionals, in tandem with families and their communities, work together within […]
3 minute read The emerging COVID-19 vaccine rollout is a potential knockout blow for a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the wellbeing of individuals and families across the globe. A new article from the editors at Families, Systems, and Health reviews the challenges of vaccine dissemination and uptake and recommends the mobilization of interprofessional […]
10 Minute Read Our conversations tell us a lot about who we are, so we thought it would be a good idea to review our top list serve conversations for 2020. Before those of you who are not members of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) stop reading, let me convince you as to why […]
Five minute read Hearing a child or youth say that they want to die can be a scary experience for any behavioral health professional. When I was a newly minted BHC, I found myself in a complex juggling act of supporting my medical team, taking my patient’s suicidal ideation (SI) seriously while understanding variations in […]
5 Minute Read This is a first. To our knowledge no systematic effort to account for the number of practices providing integrated behavioral health services in the United States has been undertaken, other than efforts to identify colocated providers in a geographical space. To be sure the data collected has its limitations and this blog […]
3 minute read Reprint. Original post available here. Family functioning is one way to measure how a family meets its physical and psychological needs; in other words, it quantifies the family’s emotional environment1,2. Family functioning has been found to be associated with chronic physical and mental illness in children3–6; however, family functioning is not consistently […]
5 Minute Read There is a necessary connection between our work in integrating behavioral health and medicine and the work of rooting out racism in health care. That connection lies at the root of what those of us who call ourselves champions of integrated care are doing: we are reforming a fragmented and too-often ineffective […]
3 Minute Read I’ve been tempted to throw my laptop/ iPhone across the room in recent weeks. This coronavirus thing and the political and economic chaos it has wrought, not to mention the morbidity and mortality that accompanies it have pushed me to the brink. And many healthcare professionals have intimated to me that they […]
2 Minute Read: It seems as if 2020 is the year of perpetual transition as we adjust and learn, adjust and learn. Our last few weeks as a membership has been spent thinking about returning to in-person visits (or not) and concurrently thinking about how our personal lives mirror this transition as states “re-open.” Below […]
