Integrated Care

With as many as a quarter of all primary care patients afflicted with mental illness, there is a sound clinical basis for integrated care. Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health is a state-of-the-art text that thoroughly reviews the evidence base and core principles that support integrated care models. As the contributors-all leaders in their field-explain, integrated care has been shown to improve quality and outcomes of mental and physical health care in primary care systems, as well as medical care for patients with severe mental illness in community mental health systems. The book includes full coverage of key concepts such as population-based care, measurement-based care, and stepped care and emphasizes how health reform initiatives are stimulating rapid dissemination of these models. Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health should be required reading for psychiatric residents and other professionals who want to help develop and disseminate these models of care in their own health care systems.

Lori E. Raney, M.D., is the Medical Director of Axis Health System in Durango, Colorado, and owner of Collaborative Care Consulting in Dolores, Colorado.