Sustainable Behavioral Health Integration Financing: Successful Practices and Opportunities
Integrating behavioral health into primary care ensures providers deliver timely, patient-centered, comprehensive whole-person care while improving access to behavioral health services. Payers, providers and purchasers are invested in providing patients high-quality, readily accessible and cost-efficient behavioral health care. Integrated care has been proven to improve patient outcomes, enhance care team satisfaction and reduce total cost of care. In California, primary care providers face significant challenges in receiving reimbursement for integrated behavioral health services which hinders their ability to integrate these services into primary care settings and limits the expansion and scaling of behavioral health integration (BHI) across their larger network. In 2024, the California Quality Collaborative (CQC) conducted a state-wide landscape assessment to identify, synthesize and disseminate successful practices that facilitate sustainable payment for BHI into primary care in commercial settings. This assessment involved interviews with organizations, including primary care providers that have integrated behavioral health services and commercial health payers such as health plans, managed behavioral health care organizations and independent physician associations (IPAs), to understand current practices, challenges and opportunities.