Mental Health Association of Palm Beach County

 Be-Merge: Behavioral Health Integration Project

With support from a planning grant from the Palm Healthcare Foundation, MHA is engaged in a year-long planning effort aimed at changing the way that primary care and mental health services are integrated in the medical community. The Be-Merge Primary Care and Integration Project will study ways of educating doctors, nurses and medical students about recognizing mental health issues in the primary care setting and treating them appropriately. The project also includes the design of a learning toolkit.

Vision of the Project

 Integrated behavioral healthcare has an important place in the redesign of our healthcare system. Integrating these services with primary care will not only increase access to behavioral health services but will decrease overall costs to our healthcare system. In practice the reasons for this important collaboration between primary care and behavioral health include:

• Appropriately treating behavioral health conditions leads to improved adherence to treatment regimes for chronic physical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, etc.
• By improving the assessment skills of primary care physicians, nurses and other primary care clinicians, more patients gain access to appropriate behavioral health care.
• More people will get appropriate care because there is often less stigma in accessing primary care than traditional services for behavioral health needs.
• Research shows that if physical health is treated, there are better outcomes in psychiatric conditions and improved functioning in daily living.

 Scope of the Project

•  Be-Merge project staff will research nationally models and best practices and work with the local advisory board to create a plan for implementation in Palm Beach County.
• The result of the year long project will be to provide to the community with a detailed plan and curriculum that help primary care physicians with behavioral health issues in their practices.
• There will be a toolkit that will include program models, forms, procedures, protocols, and agreements that can be implemented by primary care practices, pediatric care practices, clinics, HMOs, Federally Qualified Health Centers, Hospitals, and Geriatric Care Centers.
• Throughout the program year there will be program sites and focus groups that will have the opportunity to field test and provide input for some of these materials.