Join us for our next Quarterly Webinar on July 15 at 10 am Pacific Time as we explore innovative strategies to enhance behavioral health integration in primary care. This webinar will guide participants in building an integrated system grounded in a population health approach, available resources, and the needs of the primary care environment. Webinar …

Watch this recording of our latest Webinar and learn how to optimize Collaborative Care by effectively using program metrics. We provide valuable insights into best practices, tools, and strategies for leveraging data to enhance outcomes, drive decision-making, streamline care coordination, and improve service delivery performance. Webinar Highlights: Stay informed about upcoming AIMS Center webinars! Sign …

Patients who reside in rural areas face persistent gaps in behavioral health care. Research shows that Collaborative Care (CoCM) can increase treatment access, but rural settings face unique barriers that make implementing CoCM challenging. Understanding these nuances is critical to successful implementation. The latest research from the AIMS Center offers insights into potential barriers and …

The latest article from The Seattle Times’ Mental Health Project initiative, ‘Why Your Primary Care Doctor Might Ask About Your Mental Health,’ examines the growing movement to integrate mental health care into primary care settings. The authors reference the AIMS Center, which has been at the forefront of the integrated care movement for two decades. …

Collaborative Care (CoCM) shown to achieve comparable or better depression outcomes in rural clinics that treat low-income patients. 

WATCH: Advocacy for Collaborative Care (CoCM) Webinar Recording. This webinar highlighted the landscape of CoCM in the United States. Panelists described efforts to advance the knowledge, use, and fidelity of CoCM. Examples were provided of state systemic change as well as health insurers' initiatives to advance CoCM. Additionally, an overview of federal policies and laws currently in place was shared, followed by panelists describing their state and organization’s efforts to promote new legislation and policies.

WATCH: Treating Substance Use in Collaborative Care (CoCM) Webinar. This webinar highlighted considerations for identifying and treating substance use disorder(s) in primary care utilizing CoCM. The panelists described research, implementation strategies, tools and processes that are successful in working with patients who have a substance use disorder. This discussion was followed by participant Q&A. 

WATCH: Registry Innovations in Collaborative Care Webinar. This webinar included an overview of important considerations when choosing a population-based registry tool, a panelist discussion, and Q&A. Panelist highlighted the process their organizations underwent to implement a population-based registry tool that facilitates Collaborative Care at a patient and program level.

After training with the AIMS Center, Columbia County Health System in Dayton, WA has built a robust behavioral health program that makes resourceful use of telepsychiatry. Read more about the care model and barriers to behavioral health access in rural communities. 

WATCH: Sharing the Responsibilities of the BHCM in CoCM Webinar, featuring panelists discussing how they set up their workflows, including the benefits, challenges, and lessons learned during the process. This is a continuation of our quarterly webinar series, a recording of the webinar can be found below, and slide handouts can be downloaded here.

WATCH: Webinar on Billing CoCM codes, featuring three health system panelists describing their CoCM billing workflows – including benefits, challenges, and lessons learned. This webinar kicked off our new quarterly webinar series, a recording of the webinar can be found below, and slide handouts can be downloaded here.

The power of CoCM was testified to by Anna Ratzliff  before the US Senate Committee on Finance, highlighting its ability to leverage scarce psychiatric resources to treat a large number of patients in primary care and to get more patients better faster than usual primary care, even when usual care includes embedded psychotherapists.

A new study showed that Collaborative Care eliminated mental health care disparities between Black and white pregnant people. This study was presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s (SMFM) annual meeting; research suggests that implementation of the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) during pregnancy improves the screening and treatment of depression and reduces racial disparities.

Two health plans share their experiences implementing Collaborative Care in a recent article in Psychiatric News. More than eighty published studies have shown that the Collaborative Care Model CoCM lowers the cost of care and results in better patient outcomes. While implementation of CoCM continues to gain momentum nationally, widescale implementation remains slow.

On Sept. 10, U.S. Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) and Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX)  introduced bipartisan legislation that supports the implementation of Collaborative Care in the U.S.. This comes at an important time because 4 in 10 U.S. adults report symptoms of depression or anxiety, and 1 in 10 say they have seriously considered suicide.