How to assemble the best team to integrate mental health care

Building the right team is a fundamental step in integrating mental health care into your primary care practice. The right team can help integrate behavioral medicine to better treat your patients in an environment they feel comfortable in. The right team can also bring more patient and job satisfaction in the long term.

During a Behavioral Health Integration (BHI) collaborative webinar hosted by the AMA, a physician and licensed clinical social worker who have successfully integrated behavioral health care into their practices shared their experiences and perspectives with an audience eager to bring together the right group of health professionals, to successfully integrate and provide mental health care.

“Building your team is a crucial and pivotal step. You assemble your team of superheroes who will do the necessary work for the patients in your practice,” Sarah Coles, MD, primary care physician and program director of the Colorado Plateau Family and Community Medicine Residency at North Country HealthCare – a teaching health center in Flagstaff, Arizona – said during the webinar “Assembling the BWI Nursing Team: Roles and Responsibilities”.

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It’s something to take the time to get right, said Dr. coles “If you use the right team, you can overcome all obstacles and barriers. It’s worth thinking about and making an effort to find the right people.”

For example, she found that the time to remission in patients with depression dropped to 86 days for those in their Collaborative Care Model practice setting — a fraction of the 614 days to remission for patients in a traditional primary care setting. In addition to improved behavioral health outcomes, Dr. Coles, patients may also have improved physical health outcomes and safer medication management.

dr Coles said she was brand new to BHI when her practice realized it was what was best for patients and doctors, stressing that a practice can integrate mental health care even if it has no experience in it.

In order to assemble the right team of people to be successful, Dr. Cole’s nine tips for doctors to follow:

• identify champions.
• Recruit broadly as not everyone may already be in the practice.
• Ensure stakeholder buy-in and actively involve all members of the team.
• Use behavioral interviews for culture, aptitude, and skills.
• Strive for diversity, inclusion and equity.
• Focus on the mission.
• Use creative problem-solving to break down barriers and reinforce and reward achievements.
• Train and train again.
• Provide psychological security.

Check out the BHI Collaborative’s Behavioral Health Integration Compendium, which provides healthcare organizations with a proven path to delivering integrated behavioral healthcare and ensuring they have the latest, actionable information.

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Hiring the right care manager is a big part of the key to success — the glue that holds the team together — said Jennifer Schwartz, licensed social worker and behavioral health program manager and therapist for Corner Health Center in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

“One person who will define your team’s flexibility and adaptability is the behavioral health manager,” Schwartz said. “You are the star of the coordination team. This person is responsible for so many different things that need to happen for this model to be really, really effective and give you the efficiency you want.”

In an integrated model of care, the care manager is responsible for maintaining a strong connection between the patient and the practice. They are also responsible for representing and communicating with the doctor on behalf of the patient, ensuring accurate documentation of the patient’s progress to direct the consultant’s focus, recording customer services, and communicating with the doctor to complete billing to advance

Consequently, it is important to take the time to find the right person for the job, even if this means hiring people from outside the practice in order to hire the person with the right skills and personality.

The AMA formed the BWI Collaborative with seven other leading physician organizations to promote effective and sustainable integration of behavioral and mental health care into physician offices. Learn more in the Collaboration’s Overcoming Obstacles webinar series.