Behavioral Health Integration Program

The most prevalent model for addressing behavioral health concerns in pediatric primary care is failing to meet the needs of children and families.  In 2013, the PPOC, in partnership with the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital, launched the Behavioral Health Integration Program (BHIP) to create sustainable capacity to deliver integrated, evidence-based, behavioral health services in the pediatric medical home, with coordination of care at its core.

BHIP addresses three foundational issues head-on, to create and support a more capable medical home team:

  • Delivering education and skills training to improve the medical home team’s comfort and skill, managing behavioral health concerns
  • Integrating behavioral health providers in the medical home
  • Providing rapid response, case-focused, consultative support from child psychiatrists and substance use specialists

Clinical psychologists, clinical social workers, and mental health counselors, integrated in the pediatric medical home, provide diagnostic evaluation, evidence-based treatment, consultation to PCPs, and support behavioral health care coordination.

The program seeks to improve the following in the pediatric medical home:

  1. Increase rates of screening for mental health and substance use issues
  2. Increase rates of appropriate evaluation for children with identified needs
  3. Increase rates of referral to behavioral health services for children with identified needs
  4. Increase coordination of care, and bi-directional communication with community providers, for children referred outside the practice
  5. Decrease emergency room utilization for behavioral health conditions
  6. Decrease inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations

The PPOC is one of the largest pediatric primary care physician organizations in the country, with more than 400 pediatric primary care physicians, 200 nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and 100+ integrated behavioral health clinicians, working in community-based practices in 110 locations throughout Massachusetts.

The PPOC has enabled us to offer multiple new services (counseling, care coordination, telepsychiatry, etc.) to our patients while also improving our business and clinical QI performance in a much more rigorous way than ever before.

Peter Kenny
Northampton Area Pediatrics