BCBS Grants to Support Care For Low-income, Vulnerable Populations
BOSTON — Individuals with behavioral health and other medical issues are among the highest-need, most complex patients in the healthcare system but rarely receive care that integrates both aspects of treatment.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation’s new, $1.3 million grant program, called Fostering Effective Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care, will support 10 organizations — including one in Western Mass., the Center for Human Development — that are currently implementing collaborative, co-located, and integrated service models for patients with a range of medical and behavioral-health needs, including support for their families.
The National Co-morbidity Survey Replication shows that 68{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of adults with a severe behavioral-health disorder have at least one chronic medical condition, and 29{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of adults with a chronic medical condition have serious mental illness. Moreover, those with a mental illness live far shorter lives than those without, partly due to treatable medical conditions and inadequate access to medical care.
Better coordination of primary care and behavioral health — including early identification, timely and regular treatment, and rehabilitation and recovery supports — is important to improving health care outcomes and potentially controlling costs for people with behavioral-health needs, said Audrey Shelto, president of the BCBS of Massachusetts Foundation. “We believe the time is now to invest in and evaluate programs that have experience providing primary care and also treating mental-health and substance-use disorders to help define what truly constitutes an effective integrated model of care.”
The grantee organizations represent a variety of provider types — community health centers, community-based behavioral-health centers, and hospital-based programs — located throughout the entire state. “We are thrilled to be working with some of the most experienced healthcare providers in the Commonwealth and look forward to sharing information and collaborating on this critical issue,” said Shelto.
The local grantee, the Center for Human Development (CHD), has created a project in partnership with two health centers to provide integrated care to seriously mentally ill adults and individuals with substance-use disorders. The health centers — Caring Health Center of Springfield and Holyoke Health Center — provide integrated primary care, care management and wellness services, while the Western MA Recovery Learning Community provides peer-guided wellness groups and peer specialists.
The largest cluster of patients is within the Department of Mental Health-funded Community-Based Flexible Supports program, identified as ‘super-utilizers’ with high rates of avoidable ED visits. The program provides primary-care services to people with serious mental illness on site at a CHD community mental-health center, with a focus on patients with diabetes, pre-metabolic syndrome, and high risk for cardiovascular disease. Chronic-disease management and wellness programs are provided by primary-care nurses and peer specialists, and patients involved with the integrated care program experience reduced wait times when seeking medical care at the respective health centers.
The focus of the foundation’s one-year grants is the evaluation and assessment of integrated-care programs that demonstrate the greatest likelihood of effectiveness across a range of domains such as increased access, improved outcomes, greater patient engagement, and reduced costs. The foundation will document the success factors, barriers, and challenges faced by grantees with the intent of making a longer-term investment in promising, replicable models in the future. For more information, visit www.