As listeners may be aware well over 50 million Americans suffer from a mental or behavioral health disorder. Less than half of these individuals actually receive treatment. This reality is substantially worse for minorities. For example, African Americans and Hispanic whites are half as likely as non-Hispanic whites to receive treatment. Primary care practices, more than any other setting, are the cite for behavioral health treatment. Despite federal parity legislation to improve coverage for behavioral health diagnoses and improvements under the Affordable Care Act, for example, payment models intended to provide more comprehensive and coordinated care, or to better integrate behavioral with physical healthcare, behavioral health patients remain under-diagnosed and under-treated and primary care practice settings too frequently remain un- or ill-equipped to provide behavioral health services.
During this 26 minute conversation Dr. Corso begins by defining the difference between mental and behavioral health, he explains why there is a shortage of behavioral health clinicians (it's a distribution problem) and moreover provides an overview of his 2016 work, Integrating Behavioral Health Into the Medical Home: A Rapid Implementation Guide, including summarizing healthcare outcomes and spending reductions associated with six IBH examples provided in work. He concludes the conversation by explaining why IBH helps address or mitigate the stigma (still) associated with a behavioral health diagnoses.
Dr. Kent Corso is a licensed clinical health psychologist and a board certified behavior analyst. He is the President of National Capital Region Behavioral Health. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS). Dr. Corso has co-authored over 25 peer-reviewed papers on primary care behavioral health. He is, again, the lead author of Integrating Behavioral Health Into the Medical Home: A Rapid Implementation Guide.
For information on Integrating Behavioral Health go to: https://greenbranch.com/store/index.cfm/product/1470/integrating-behavioral-health-into-the-medical-home-a-rapid-implementation-guide.cfm.
For information on National Capital Region Behavioral Health go to: http://ncrbehavioralhealth.com/about.php.
"Integrating Behavioral Health Into the Medical Home: A Rapid Implementation Guide," A Conversation with the Lead Author, Dr. Kent Corso (June 27th)