Clinical, operational, and financial evaluation practices in integrated behavioral health care.

Introduction: Integrated behavioral health care is an important pathway to providing whole person care. It is delivered through a transdisciplinary lens and team and funded through complex policies, billing codes, and systems. While the clinical practice of integrated behavioral health care has received attention in the research, less is known about how health care systems demonstrate and evaluate the utility, effectiveness, impact, and longevity of integrating behavioral health into primary care.

A systematic review of evaluation research in integrated behavioral health care: Operational and financial characteristics.

Introduction: Integrated behavioral health care (IBHC) is an emerging solution for the delivery of behavioral health in primary care contexts. Although IBHC has been implemented and studied for more than 2 decades, little seems to be known about how it is best evaluated. This article illustrates a framework for IBHC evaluation based on the Three World view (with a focus on the operational and financial worlds) and delivers results from a systematic review on the operational and financial characteristics of existing IBHC research.