Introducing your Care Team

Educating your patients about Collaborative Care and what they can expect from it is crucial to the care model’s success. Patient engagement and ownership of their care plan are key aspects of patient-centered team care, one of the five principles of Collaborative Care. Use this template to introduce your Collaborative Care team to patients. Also available in Spanish.

Brief Pain Inventory (BPI)

The Brief Pain Inventory is a medical questionnaire used to measure pain, developed by the Pain Research Group of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Symptom Evaluation in Cancer Care.

Help Clinic Staff Talk with Patients About the PHQ-9

This tool is designed to help clinic support staff with answers to frequent questions they may hear from patients about the PHQ-9.

It’s best for support staff to have the opportunity to role play and practice before using the PHQ-9 with patients. It can also be helpful for support staff to keep this someplace where they can refer to it, as needed, when they get questions from patients.

Why Practice Collaborative Care?

The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) has a robust evidence base with over eighty randomized controlled trials showing it is the best at treating depression in many populations and settings. CoCM is beneficial for Primary Care Providers (PCPs) and their patients because it offers an established evidence base, better medical outcomes, help with challenging patient cases, faster improvement, and the collaboration of a team.

We highly encourage that this document be shared with PCPs, stakeholders, and others looking to implement CoCM.

Comparing Collaborative Care to Usual Care

Compared to usual care, Collaborative Care is shown to increase the effectiveness of depression treatment and lower total healthcare costs. This handout outlines those differences using data from the IMPACT trial.
Updated 1/2/19

Why Schedule Activities Handout

This handout is given to a patient by a Behavioral Health Care Manager. It helps explain to the patient why scheduling daily activities is a key step to improve depression. There is also a version in Spanish.

Scheduling Activities Worksheet

This worksheet is given to the patient by the Behavioral Health Care Manager. It is a tool used to plan a week’s worth of daily activities to help relieve stress and depression in the patient.

Evidence Base for Collaborative Care

A substantial body of evidence for Collaborative Care has emerged since its development at the University of Washington in the 1990s. Beginning with the seminal IMPACT Trial published in 2002, more than ninety randomized controlled trials and several meta-analyses show that Collaborative Care (CoCM) is more effective than usual care for patients with depression, anxiety, and other behavioral health conditions.

CoCM is also shown to be highly effective in treating co-morbid mental health and physical conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and HIV. The document summarizes several selected research, review, and practice-based articles that demonstrate Collaborative Care significantly improves patient lives.

PHQ-9 Visual Answer Aid

This answer aid is a visual representation of the PHQ-9 answer scale.  Behavioral Health Care Managers can use this resource alongside the PHQ-9 during screening to get a fuller understanding of how their patient is feeling.