Manage more behavioral health
Different states and health plans incentivize primary practices for integrating behavioral health into their offerings. Rather than dismiss this addition to your own practice as too cumbersome to take on, I would recommend using telehealth to expand behavioral health care services.
If your practice is working toward a team-based, interdisciplinary approach to care delivery, behavioral health is a critical component. While other elements of this “whole person” health care may be better suited for an office visit, the vast majority of behavioral health services can be delivered virtually.
To decide if your patient may benefit from behavioral health care, the primary care provider (PCP) can conduct a screening via telehealth. Once the screening is complete, the PCP can discuss results and refer the patient to a mental health professional – all via telehealth. While patients may be reluctant to receive behavioral health treatment, perhaps because of stigma or inexperience, they may appreciate the telemedicine option as they can remain in the comfort and familiarity of their homes.
Collaborative Care is both an in-person and virtual model that allows PCP practices to offer behavioral health services in a cost effective way by utilizing a psychiatrist as a “consultant” to the practice as opposed to hiring a full-time psychiatrist. All services within the Collaborative Care Model can be offered via telehealth, and all major insurance providers reimburse primary care providers for delivering Collaborative Care.
When PCPs provide behavioral health treatment as an “extension” of the primary care service offerings, the stigma is reduced and more patients are willing to accept the care they need.
Many areas of the country suffer from a lack of access to behavioral health specialists. In rural counties, for example, the nearest therapist may be located over an hour away. By integrating behavioral telehealth services into your practice’s offerings, you can remove geographic and transportation obstacles to care for your patient population.
Doing this can lead to providing more culturally competent care. It’s important that you’re able to offer mental health services to your patients from a professional with a similar ethnic or racial background. Language barriers and cultural differences may limit a provider’s ability to treat a patient, particularly if the patient faces health disparities related to race or ethnicity. If your practice needs to look outside of your community to tap into a more diverse pool of providers to better meet your patients’ needs, telehealth makes it easier to do that.
Adopting telemedicine for consultative patient visits offers primary care a path toward restoring patient volume and hope for a postpandemic future.
Mark Stephan, MD, is chief medical officer at Equality Health, a whole-health delivery system. He practiced family medicine for 19 years, including hospital medicine and obstetrics in rural and urban settings. Dr. Stephan has no conflicts related to the content of this piece.