Advancing Behavioral Health Integration for Small Primary Care Practices: Progress, Emerging Themes, and Policy Considerations

This issue brief, co-funded by United Hospital Fund (UHF) and the New York Health Foundation (NYHealth), highlights the interim progress of an effort to integrate behavioral health screenings into 11 small primary care practices in New York.  

Integrating screening, diagnosis, and treatment of common behavioral health conditions—such as depression, anxiety, and substance use—into primary care is widely acknowledged as a pressing goal, but has remained a significant challenge, especially for smaller, resource-constrained practices that provide much of New York City’s and State’s primary care.

In 2016, a team led by Dr. Henry Chung of Montefiore Health System and Dr. Harold Pincus of New York-Presbyterian Hospital developed published the report, Advancing Integration of Behavioral Health into Primary Care: A Continuum-Based Framework. To build on this work, funding from UHF (for six New York City practices) and NYHealth (for five practices throughout the State) supported a launch of a project involving 11 small practices in New York City and State. This diverse group of highly motivated practices—all with five or fewer primary care providers—is working to move from early to advanced stages of integrated practice.

The first issue brief described how the 11 selected practices planned to implement and integrate behavioral health services, as well as their 6-month goals, and presented results from a baseline readiness assessment for behavioral health integration.

This issue brief, the second in a series of three, offers insights, at the midway mark, from a year-long effort to move from theory to real-world practice using that incremental approach.

Read the issue brief here.