Improving medical residents’ utilisation of integrated mental health in primary care

BACKGROUND: Integration of mental health services allows for improved prevention and management of chronic conditions within the primary care setting. This quality improvement project aimed to increase adherence to and functioning of an integrated care model within a patient-centred medical home. Specifically, the project focused on improving collaboration between Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PC-MHI) and the medical resident Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT) at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, New York (VAMC Northport). METHOD: The project used increased education, training and relationship building among the medical resident PACTs, and the establishment of regularly occurring integrated team meetings for medical and mental health providers. Education of residents was measured with a self-assessment pre-training and post-training, while utilisation was measured by the percentage of patients currently on a PACT’s panel with at least one PC-MHI encounter in the last 12 months (known in VAMC Northport as PACT-15 metric). RESULTS: Two resident PACTs that received both training and weekly integrated meetings increased their utilisation of integrated mental health services by 3.8% and 4.5%, respectively. PACTs that participated in training only, with no regular meetings, showed an initial improvement in utilisation that declined over time. CONCLUSIONS: Training alone appeared beneficial but insufficient for increased integration over time. The addition of a regularly occurring integrated weekly meeting may be a critical component of facilitating sustained mental health integration in a primary care medical home model.