AMA STEPS Forward®

Practice Innovation Strategies: Behavioral health integration

UPDATED . 4 MIN READ

Integrating medical and behavioral health care services within primary care practices helps promote more accessible and equitable treatment of patients’ behavioral, mental and physical health needs.

This collection of AMA STEPS Forward® Practice Innovation Strategies and BHI Collaborative products provides physician practices with evidence-based best practices, tools, aggregated resources and practical solutions to implementing and sustaining integrated behavioral health care.

Developed by the BHI Collaborative, the Behavioral Health Integration (BHI) Compendium serves as a tool to learn about integrating behavioral health care, which includes mental health and substance use disorders care, and how to make it effective for your practice and patients.

[The] aim is to provide accessible, detailed information on the steps required to integrate behavioral health care, which includes mental health and substance use disorders (SUD), into your practice and to provide links to resources should you desire further, more specific information.

View an overview or download the BHI Compendium.


This collection of toolkits focuses on behavioral health education, including the resources and support physicians need to bring medical and behavioral health services together.


Access strategies and solutions to catalyzing effective and sustainable integration of behavioral and mental health care into physician practices. 


View discussions about BHI, how COVID-19 has affected mental health needs and how health care professionals are working to address patients’ needs today and beyond.


This video collection discusses ways physicians can advance the integration of behavioral health in their practice, during COVID-19 and beyond.

 

 


Practice experts share how they successfully integrated behavioral health care into their practice workflow, creating a seamless experience for patients and the care team. 


Innovation Academy

AMA STEPS Forward® Innovation Academy provides practice resources such as webinars, mentoring, learning collaboratives, boot camps, and more.


The AMA provides physician practices with tools and practical solutions to integrate behavioral health programs.


AMA partnered with the RAND Corporation to learn about the motivators, facilitators and barriers to BHI from physician practices with firsthand experience. 

“We found that behavioral health integration is possible in a wide variety of medical practices, not just in primary care,” said Dr. Peggy G. Chen, co-author of the study and a physician researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “The key factor in the success of behavioral health integration was adaptation to each practice’s needs and resources.”

Explore key findings and more.

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