While many primary care physicians mainly focus on treating the pathological causes of diseases, it is eminent that other psychosocial aspects of diseases are also considered as part of a holistic treatment plan – an aspect of medical care often handled by behavioral health providers.
The primary care model of medicine is increasingly modified to allow medical and behavioral health providers to work collaboratively in an integrative manner by going through different stages of integration. Many primary care physicians mainly focus on treating the pathological causes of diseases. However, it is eminent that other psychosocial aspects of conditions are also considered as part of a holistic treatment plan – an aspect of medical care often handled by behavioral health providers. The emergent nature of integrative medicine creates an avenue for behavioral health providers to give complementary and alternative medical care alongside other medical providers contributing to less negative impacts on clinical care, overall better health outcomes, and satisfaction for patients. This emergent model is termed the Biodyne model of health care.
For this reasons, I state below the three key qualities that a Doctor of Behavioral Health must have:
1. Be a team player
For a successful medical and behavioral integrative healthcare model, both medical and behavioral health providers would function as a team of providers in a physically integrated space to implement a single and holistic patient care plan. The integrated physical space would allow for structural integration of knowledge across different disciplines of medicine and promote collaboration among the leadership of the medical care team. The team would be connected via a shared electronic medical records (EMR) system providing access to medical diagnosis and instructions from different care team members. More importantly, each of the integrated medical care providers would understand the roles and contributions of other providers towards a better healthcare delivery for a patient. Both the medical care team and the patient would see a vivid clinical structure to give a comprehensive healthcare delivery for the patient as a whole. The integrated care team would include the patient, primary care provider, behavioral health provider, care manager, clinical nurse, pharmacist, and other medical specialists.
2. Be interdisciplinary
In addition to the medical education honed by a behavioral health provider, interdisciplinary skills are often essential and contribute to positive patient outcomes. The acquired interdisciplinary skills would help improve the overall quality of life and educate patients on the underlying risk factors for different behavioral health problems. Therefore, a Doctor of Behavioral Health should develop a certain level of understanding in public health, psychopharmacology, health informatics, health economics, and health care finance. More importantly, the provider must have a good sense of the population you are serving (e.g., demographic information relating to women, racial/ethnic groups, and underserved people).
3. Be adaptable
Although the integrated medical and behavioral healthcare delivery model promises better health outcomes for the patient, there are fundamental challenges to its implementation. Notably, changes to the existing primary care structure relating to leadership, culture, interpersonal relationships, and patient care workflow are potential challenges to integrated health care. In addition, in some cases, a behavioral health provider may need time to adjust to different care models or transfer trust among an existing network of providers. As such, the provider must be ready to transition through the coordinated, co-located, and fully integrated stages of the integrated medical and behavioral health care model.
The links below provide more information about the Doctor of Behavioral health and the integrated health care model:
1. International Foundation of Integrated Care
2. The Cummins Graduate Institute
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