Making It to Sustainability: Evaluating Billing Strategies for Collaborative Care.

The collaborative care model (CoCM) is an effective strategy to manage common mental disorders in primary care. Despite the growing adoption of newer CoCM billing codes to support these programs, few studies have investigated the use of these codes. This column evaluated the implementation of CoCM billing codes by comparing clinics using different billing strategies and assessed the impact of CoCM code implementation on revenue and on clinical and process-of-care outcomes.

Psychiatry's Expanded Integration into Primary Care.

Integrated behavioral care, and in particular, the collaborative care model, has been working to improve access and treatment for people with mental health disorders. Integrated care allows for adaptable, scalable, and sustainable practice that addresses the mental health needs of the public. During the pandemic several challenges emerged to delivering integrated care.

Development and Implementation of an Integrated Care Fellowship.

Background: Integrated care is a common approach to leverage scarce psychiatric resources to deliver mental health care in primary care settings.

Objective: Describe a formal clinical fellowship devoted to professional development for the integrated care psychiatrist role.

Methods: The development of a formal year-long clinical fellowship in integrated care is described.

Integrated behavioral health treatments: innovations to achieve population impact.

Translational Behavioral Medicine is a journal that brings together relevant scholars and practitioners to produce articles of scientific and practical significance in a variety of fields. Here, we published a call for manuscripts detailing the study of innovations in the field of implementation of integrated care in the USA. We present 13 articles, all peer reviewed and all targeting some aspect of integrated care implementation.

Sustaining the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM): Billing Newly Available CoCM CPT Codes in an Academic Primary Care System.

Novel Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes specific to the collaborative care model (CoCM) offer advantages over traditional billing options, but their uptake may require considerable billing and clinical workflow adjustments. This column presents a case study addressing the challenges of using these codes within the University of Washington Neighborhood Clinics (UWNC), an academically affiliated primary care clinic system in western Washington State. The UWNC experience thus far demonstrates that CoCM CPT codes can successfully be used in a large academic primary care system to help move this evidence-based service model toward financial sustainability.

Implementing collaborative care to reduce depression for rural native American/Alaska native people.

Background: The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of Collaborative Care on rural Native American and Alaska Native (AI/AN) patients.

Methods: Collaborative Care was implemented in three AI/AN serving clinics. Clinic staff participated in training and coaching designed to facilitate practice change.

Early Health System Experiences with Collaborative Care (CoCM) Billing Codes: a Qualitative Study of Leadership and Support Staff.

Background: Although collaborative care (CoCM) is an evidence-based and widely adopted model, reimbursement challenges have limited implementation efforts nationwide. In recent years, Medicare and other payers have activated CoCM-specific codes with the primary aim of facilitating financial sustainability.

Objective: To investigate and describe the experiences of early adopters and explorers of Medicare's CoCM codes.

Financing for Collaborative Care - A Narrative Review.

Purpose Of Review: Collaborative care (CoCM) is an evidence-based model for the treatment of common mental health conditions in the primary care setting. Its workflow encourages systematic communication among clinicians outside of face-to-face patient encounters, which has posed financial challenges in traditional fee-for-service reimbursement environments.

Recent Findings: Organizations have employed various financing strategies to promote CoCM sustainability, including external grants, alternate payment model contracts with specific payers and the use of billing codes for individual components of CoCM.

The Role of the Integrated Care Psychiatrist in Community Settings: A Survey of Psychiatrists' Perspectives.

Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the work and experiences of psychiatrists practicing integrated care in the community.

Methods: Consulting psychiatrists working in integrated care participated in an online survey about their experiences, opinions, and advice. Results were analyzed with quantitative and qualitative methods.

A collaborative care approach to depression treatment for Asian Americans.

OBJECTIVE This study examined effectiveness of collaborative care for depression among Asians treated either at a community health center that focuses on Asians (culturally sensitive clinic) or at general community health centers and among a matched population of whites treated at the same general community clinics. METHODS For 345 participants in a statewide collaborative care program, use of psychotropic medications, primary care visits with depression care managers, and depression severity (as measured with the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire) were tracked at baseline and 16 weeks. RESULTS After adjustment for differences in baseline demographic characteristics, all three groups had similar treatment process and depression outcomes.

Rapid deletion of mossy cells does not result in a hyperexcitable dentate gyrus: implications for epileptogenesis.

Loss of cells from the hilus of the dentate gyrus is a major histological hallmark of human temporal lobe epilepsy. Hilar mossy cells, in particular, are thought to show dramatic numerical reductions in pathological conditions, and one prominent theory of epileptogenesis is based on the assumption that mossy cell loss directly results in granule cell hyperexcitability. However, whether it is the disappearance of hilar mossy cells from the dentate gyrus circuitry after various insults or the subsequent synaptic-cellular alterations (e.