An initial evaluation of the National Demonstration Project, a patient-centered medical home project sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians, recommended several supporting elements that would be essential for successfully implementing future medical home projects (
20 ). These elements included establishment of appropriate financing models, development of appropriate quality and accreditation metrics, adaptation of health information technologies, and implementation of appropriate technical support. These echo key components described as essential for supporting quality improvement efforts in general medical populations (
21 ) and for persons with mental or substance use disorders (
6 ). In the section below, we discuss how each of these features is important for the demonstration projects to be successful in improving care at the primary care-behavioral health interface.
Implementing new financing models
Accountable care organizations. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has provisions for organizing hospitals, specialists, and primary care providers as accountable care organizations—collectives of providers that would take responsibility for a group of patients. Under most accountable care organization models, providers are paid bonuses based on their ability to meet quality goals and contribute to reduced costs.
Psychiatrists, like other specialists, view the possibility of joining accountable care organizations with some caution, given uncertainty about who will oversee them (for example, hospitals or primary care practices) and concerns over possible loss of revenue compared with current fee-for-service payment schemes (
22,
23 ). However, membership could also support development of the new service models, new financing models, and the measurement and quality improvement infrastructure, which has been difficult to achieve in the current system. They could provide the opportunity for mental health and substance abuse treatment providers to integrate vertically with other components of the health care system, contribute to achieving cost and quality targets, and share in the payment methods being discussed in relationship to accountable care organizations (such as fee-for-service plus shared savings, episode or case rates, and pay for performance).
Accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes can be mutually reinforcing, with accountable care organizations providing an organizational environment to support patient-centered medical homes and patient-centered medical homes allowing accountable care organizations to optimize quality and efficiency of care (
24 ). They could provide economies of scale for solo practitioners as well as community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, allowing them to develop virtual patient-centered medical homes (
25 ). Accountable care organizations would not guarantee integration in and of themselves, but they could provide a structure in which integrated models could be supported and incentives for integration provided.
Both similarities and differences exist between these approaches and the 1990s managed care experience, and lessons learned from those experiments should be applied to these new models. During the 1990s, managed behavioral health care was largely operated separately from general health insurance managed care programs, an arrangement that provided expertise in managing mental health care but raised potential challenges in coordination with general medical care (
26 ).
In contrast, accountable care organizations would include persons with general medical conditions and those with mental health conditions in the same risk pools. Thus, although these organizations could provide incentives for better coordination of care, they might also divert resources away from populations with mental disorders and other complex comorbid conditions. Because of the high costs in the Medicaid program associated with comorbid mental health and substance use disorders (
27 ), these populations could become targets of cost savings for accountable care organizations, as they have been under Medicaid disease management programs. More generally, pay-for-performance approaches should be applied with caution to mental health and substance use conditions, pending better indicators, risk adjustment models, and capacity to establish accountability across multiple providers and systems of care (
28 ).
State financing innovations. Current state initiatives may also provide models for these organizational and financing approaches to supporting improved care at the primary care-behavioral health interface. In the Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC) project, Medicaid enrollees receive health care and care management through local networks made up of physicians, hospitals, social service agencies, and county health departments. Preliminary evidence suggests that these programs may help improve quality of care for chronic medical illnesses and save costs (
29 ). The CCNC project is a primary care case management model that could be used as a prototype for accountable care organizations under health reform.
Although the CCNC itself was not designed as an integration initiative, in the past several years four CCNC networks have worked with state and regional mental health authorities to pilot a model for integrating mental health and primary care. Recently, the CCNC system began a gain-sharing demonstration with Medicare, designed to better serve persons dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. In the demonstration, the CCNC networks will expand current care coordination efforts for the Medicaid population to dually eligible persons and, over time, to the Medicare-only population as well. The CCNC networks will receive a per-member-per-month fee to cover care management, care transitions, and colocation of mental health services. Medicare savings beyond an established threshold will be shared with the networks and reinvested (
30 ). Planned expansion of integrated services through CCNC-employed mental health and substance abuse treatment staff may further assist primary care practitioners in meeting the expectations for medical home management of chronic health conditions, including mental health and substance use conditions.
A key financing approach for the patient-centered medical home is a monthly care management fee paid per enrollee per month in addition to fee for service. There is an opportunity to build on this idea by combining it with a unique financing model for integrated care now under way in Minnesota. More than 90 clinics have participated in an initiative known as DIAMOND (Depression Improvement Across Minnesota, Offering a New Direction), based on the IMPACT model (Improving Mood—Promoting Access to Collaborative Treatment) (
31 ). By providing an organizational and financial framework to support this evidence-based approach to depression management, the DIAMOND program has been able to demonstrate initial outcomes that are superior to usual depression treatment given to patients in primary care.
Behind the clinical statistics, the DIAMOND project is applying the concept of an all-payer case rate for depression care. Minnesota health plans are paying a monthly per-person case rate to participating clinics for a bundle of services—including a depression care manager and consulting psychiatrist—under a single case rate billing code. For some of the participating plans in Minnesota, the case rate payments are being made from the health care side of the plan, rather than the mental health side, so that any cost savings can accrue to the health plans (
32 ). Combining the DIAMOND payment model with the patient-centered medical home care management monthly fee could facilitate the adoption of collaborative care models for common mental disorders in primary care.
Standardization of billing codes. Other changes under health reform may provide greater financial viability for integrated models of care and evidence-based strategies for quality improvement. The legislation promises to bring more standardization to Medicaid (for example, eligibility thresholds, essential benefits, and minimum payment rates to primary care providers), and it could include a requirement for state plans to incorporate the current CPT (current procedural terminology) codes that support integration (for example, Health and Behavior 96150 series and Screening and Brief Intervention 99408 and 99409) and eliminate frequently described barriers to billing (such as same-day billing prohibitions). Medicaid and Medicare demonstration projects should provide a setting in which to assess the practicality and use of these changes and the more widespread use of bundling models such as those used in the DIAMOND project, which could be valuable for improving quality and increasing incentives for coordination of care across providers.
Quality metrics
Broadening the range of quality measures. Rigorous quality assessment standards are essential for the successful implementation and evaluation of demonstration projects and other changes occurring under health reform. However, quality metrics for mental health and substance use disorders are generally more limited than those for other chronic conditions (
7 ). The National Committee for Quality Assurance is seeking to expand its quality indicators for mental health and substance use conditions. Implementing quality measures for serious mental illnesses is of particular importance for evaluating Medicaid programs and other public-sector entities under health reform.
As demonstration projects and broader reform efforts move forward, it will be important to develop and measure indicators not only for individual general medical and mental health conditions but also for the key processes associated with clinical integration—effective communication (transfer of information across providers), coordination (shared understanding of goals and roles), and continuity of care (uninterrupted delivery of services across levels of care) (
33 ). However, there are no validated measures of coordination or clinical integration that can be used for assessing quality of care of persons with mental and substance use disorders (
34 ). Demonstration projects for patient-centered medical homes and accountable care organizations could provide a laboratory in which to develop and test candidate measures of clinical integration that could subsequently be included in efforts to implement these models more widely.
Other quality assessment organizations will also need to be engaged in these quality assessment and improvement efforts. The Physician Quality Reporting Initiative was established in 2007 to assess quality of care among physicians; it provides incentive payments to physicians for reporting data quality measures for Medicare beneficiaries ("pay for reporting") (
35 ). Physicians can receive a bonus payment of 2% based on their total Medicare Part B payments if they select at least three quality measures and report data for those measures on at least 80% of applicable patient encounters. However, mental health has limited representation in these measures; of 179 indicators, only four are related to mental health (depression screening, evaluation, suicide assessment, and acute medication treatment).
The National Quality Forum, which collects and certifies quality measures from a range of sources, is working on a consensus development project funded by the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a more robust set of outpatient indicators for mental health, including serious and persistent mental illnesses (
www.qualityforum.org ). Candidate measures include management of common medical comorbidities, preventive medical services, and enhanced clinical outcomes of medical illnesses, as well as measures of coordination, such as documentation of communication by an outpatient mental health clinician to the patient's primary care clinician (
36 ). In 2007 the National Quality Forum issued a set of evidence-based practices for the treatment of substance use conditions and is working on approaches to measuring continuing care management for those conditions. These mental health and substance use measures can be used as potential candidates for development and specification by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
Expansion of accreditation and certification programs. The National Committee for Quality Assurance should also be supported in expanding its accreditation and certification programs to include more robust quality measures. New draft certification standards for the patient-centered medical home include references to integration of mental health and substance use screening and brief treatment. The managed behavioral health organization accreditation process needs to be strengthened to incorporate expanded quality indicators, including measures of coordination with general health care.
Supporting health information technology
Health information technology is a central feature facilitating quality improvement and better integration of services (
37 ). In its patient-centered medical home certification standards, the National Committee for Quality Assurance includes multiple information technology features, including patient tracking and registries, electronic prescribing, and test tracking. However, mental health and substance abuse treatment systems have historically lagged behind other areas of medicine in the development and standardization of these information technology tools. Furthermore, regulatory barriers have limited the exchange of information between primary care and mental health and substance abuse treatment settings.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act explicitly requires that information technology be a part of medical home demonstration projects, and it will also be critical in facilitating the success of integration efforts. In developing these technologies, standardized templates for electronic medical records and personal health records should include the data elements needed to manage and coordinate general medical care and mental health and substance abuse care. These systems need to be carefully designed to ensure that critical information on health status and services can be extracted for measuring service patterns and performance.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act authorizes roughly $36 billion for health information technology. Most of the funds are expected to be distributed between 2011 and 2016 as adoption incentives through Medicare and Medicaid to qualified health care providers who adopt and use electronic medical records in accordance with the act's requirements. Although mental health and substance abuse treatment providers are not eligible for these funds, legislation has recently been introduced to include them as qualified health care providers in this grant program (
38 ).