How Any Pediatric Practice Can Successfully Integrate Behavioral Health

You are likely seeing more diagnoses of behavioral disorders than ever in your practice. Have you thought about Behavioral Health Integration (BHI)? If you’re hesitant because it’s expensive, labor-intensive, or simply impossible in your community, reconsider: any practice can integrate these services and help the many patients in need of emotional healthcare.

Behavioral Health on Any Budget

There are many important steps to providing quality care for a behavioral health disorder, from diagnosis to longer treatment sessions to carefully selected prescriptions. If you find yourself in the following situations, it could be time to start considering other options for giving those patients the best quality collaborative care:

• You’re spending more time and longer visits with behavioral health patients in your primary care setting -- at the cost of other patients and practice revenue
• You see your patients struggle to receive quality mental healthcare because of wait times or other obstacles
• You find yourself wanting advice on the diagnosis, treatment, and care of complex patients
• You see a need in your community for kids with difficult home, school, or emotional lives, or who are testing positive for ACEs
• You notice an increase in positive behavioral health screenings and aren’t sure your practice can handle the load
• A behavioral health specialist -- a social worker, LCSW-C, or pediatric therapist has a practice in your community or has requested to see patients through your practice

Behavioral Health Integration (BHI) can help you see more patients, improve access to pediatric emotional and mental healthcare, improve whole child health outcomes, and help your community get the quality of care they need to grow up happy as well as healthy. 

Learn more with PCC's ebook

Despite these great benefits, behavioral health services aren’t as simple as opening your door and inviting a therapist in to help see your patients! Can you afford to hire a therapist onto your team or keep referring? Should your behavioral health expert share your space or keep their own office, and what if after all the preparation, it doesn’t work out?

These are common anxieties for pediatricians, and PCC covers all of them in our ebook, Integrated Behavioral Health: A Guide to Expanding Access. Check out the infographic above to see the common anxieties of pediatricians dealing with BH.

Your practice can integrate mental and emotional health services right now. Start the process of integration by choosing the path that best fits your practice’s needs. Click below to get the ebook and start your journey to behavioral healthcare, and being the whole-child healthcare advocate for kids who need you.