VIDEO: AMA launches new resources for integrating behavioral health in primary care

The AMA’s Behavioral Health Collaborative recently released four how-to guides that can assist primary care clinicians seeking to integrate mental health and behavioral health services into their practices.

The guides — which focus on practice workflow, pharmacological treatments, substance use disorder screening and treatment and suicide prevention — are the latest additions to AMA’s Behavioral Health Compendium, which also includes materials on collaborative cultures, billing and coding, privacy and security, telehealth and health equity.

According to Kathleen Blake, MD, AMA’s vice president of Health Care Quality, the materials address real-world scenarios and solutions regarding the integration of primary care, mental health and behavioral health.

“We asked physicians what it was that they needed to be satisfied and confident about the care that they had delivered to their patients. What they told us is that they wanted to know at the end of the day, that the issues the health concerns that their patients had raised with them in the office setting had been well addressed,” she told Healio Primary Care. “We then developed a series of … how-to guides, and they are what I would call news that you can use.”

In this video, Blake provides more information on each new how-to guide.

Reference:

New guides added to growing compendium of behavioral health resources. https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/new-guides-added-growing-compendium-behavioral-health-resources. Published Nov. 10, 2021. Accessed Dec. 15, 2021.