At Morris Hospital, mental health is health.
Located about 90 minutes southwest of Chicago, Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers serve a substantial rural service area spanning across five counties with 27 locations and 41 primary care physicians. We prioritize personalized care delivery to ensure the highest-quality services close to home. Since 2017, we’ve integrated behavioral health into our primary care to ensure no patient navigates wellness alone.
Demand for behavioral health services has surged nationally thanks to increased awareness and reduced stigma, but it also faces a national workforce shortage. The supply of BH professionals can’t keep up with the demand, and rural communities face an even larger disparity. It inspires a need for innovative solutions to close care gaps. To deliver high-quality care, health systems have to support behavioral health to support the whole person.
The concept of integrated behavioral health answers the demand without straining resources or acquiring a new specialty team. This is an ideal strategy not just for rural communities but any health system navigating the financial challenges of our industry. Instead of isolating physical and mental care into two separate offerings, they become one. The primary care physician becomes the first line of contact by approaching patient encounters with physical and behavioral health in mind. If the patient shows a need for mental health services, the provider has a BH team to support them: a care manager and consultant.
Investing in the time and resources for this project not only benefits your organization’s standing but the long-term health of your patient population.
Morris Hospital follows the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), one of the two most widely researched and adopted BH integration models. It’s suited to treating chronic mental illnesses and leverages remote team members to offer more flexibility and scalability, which is ideal for rural facilities in particular. Since patients already have a relationship with their primary care provider, that provider works in tandem with a behavioral health care manager to address any concerns. The BH care manager then acts as the main liaison between a psychiatric consultant and the primary care provider.
Using screening as the first line of defense, applicable PHQ-9 or GAD-7 scores trigger the next steps of bringing in BH support for a patient. The primary care provider and BH care manager work closely with the patient while the psychiatric consultant typically communicates with only the care team.
While preparing, we strive to balance the needs for confidentiality and tracking. MEDITECH Expanse’s patient registries, for instance, supports proactive decision making in an intuitive, actionable way. Tailoring the registries to our needs, the tool allows our care teams to track and trend the population efficiently. Providers can examine an entire group of patients and sort by modifiers such as patients with high PHQ-9 or GAD-7 scores, patients who do not have future appointments scheduled, or days since their last BHC or PCP visit. The registries also make it easy to tie in time-based monthly billing, as pictured below.
Confidentiality within the EHR is also essential. Only the BH team and authorized providers have access to sensitive behavioral health data in a patient's record. Additionally, MEDITECH Expanse hosts a depression toolkit to help us monitor patients, and it sends an alert if the patient shows concerning signs.
It’s no longer an advantage but a necessity to invest in behavioral health services for complete care. Even nine years into our integration, we apply a continuous learning approach. The industry, behavioral health research, and our patient population is changing all the time, so being prepared to evolve keeps our program strong and patients healthy.
Learn how a strong interoperability strategy can reduce clinician burden, improve patient care, and preserve your autonomy.