What exactly is “primary care”? A few years ago, Marci Nielsen, Ph.D., then-Chief Executive Officer of Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, described the “key elements” of primary care as “assess, prescribe, and refer” in her keynote presentation, The Evolution Of Patient-Centered Care & The Future Of Integration In Health Care at one of our executive…

Getting a room full of executives to agree on the right recipe for integration is still a long shot (see What’s In A Name?). Is “integration” the combination of behavioral health and primary care in a location? Or is it a business model? What is the best approach to combine ingredients such as financing, electronic health…

The primary care market is being radically re-imagined where it overlaps with behavioral health care. On of the emerging trends is a best practice model that integrates care coordination with long-term services and supports (LTSS), medical, pharmacy, behavioral health, and social services—all while it coordinates/provides primary care (see The Primary Care Reinvention).
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Last year we really began tracking the Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS) move to manage care models, and the industry shift of services for consumers with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD) in that direction as well. As we’ve reported before, 50% of consumers with I/DD receive their health and behavioral health benefits through Medicaid health plans—and…

In all the discussions I’ve had about the changing face of primary care, the merging of services under the concept of “integrated care” is usually the focus of the conversation. But there is another change in the market that will be equally—and possibly more—disruptive to the idea of business as usual. That disruption is the…