At Moses Lake Community Health Center our behavioral health providers are embedded in our Primary Care clinics and integrated as part of the patients’ care team. Their focus is to support patients in collaboration with their Primary Care Physicians by providing brief interventions geared towards improving physical and emotional health.

Program Purpose

The Integrated Behavioral Health Program in Primary Care is designed to accomplish a specific set of clinical management objectives, both at the level of the individual case as well as at the system level. In large part, these program goals are derived from the service philosophy of improving health and behavioral health outcomes for patients with acute, chronic or recurrent conditions.

Taken as a whole, the integrated behavioral health care model is designed to accomplish the following:

Clinical Goals

• Assist the primary health care providers to recognize and treat mental disorders and psychosocial problems.
• Assist in the early detection of “at risk” patients, with the aim of preventing further psychological or physical deterioration.
• Assist the primary health care provider to prevent relapse or morbidity in patients with conditions that tend to recur over time.
• Assist in the prevention and management of patients addicted to pain medicine or tranquilizers.
• Assist in the prevention and management of functional disabilities.
• Assist primary health care providers to obtain quality clinical outcomes with high prevalence mental disorders.
• Assist PCPs to treat and manage patients with chronic emotional and/or health problems efficiently and effectively.
• Assist PCPs to manage patients who use medical visits to obtain needed social support via assistance provided by promotora staff.
• Improve the effectiveness of quality PCP interventions in relation to behavioral health issues.
• Efficiently move patients into appropriate mental health specialty care, when indicated.
• Improve the health status of the clinic population through increasing adherence with life-style change regimens, e.g., smoking cessation, weight management, etc.

Access and Satisfaction Outcomes

• Increase access for patients to behavioral health services.
• Increase patient satisfaction by providing routine behavioral health services in the primary care setting.
• Increase patient satisfaction with coordination of services.

• Increase PCP satisfaction with access to and feedback from both integrated and specialty behavioral health services.