Seneca nation health system, behavioral health integration initiative BH2I - the seneca nation of indians, health system implement a behavioral health integrated system of care into acute care,…

Seneca nation health system, behavioral health integration initiative BH2I - the seneca nation of indians, health system implement a behavioral health integrated system of care into acute care, primary care, post-acute care, health homes and community-based services, when needed. Successful integration will involve more than just increasing access to behavioral health services through CO-location; the entire primary care lens used to view the patient will be transformed into a holistic scanner that includes placing as much priority on knowing and understanding the behavioral health needs of the patient as the physical health needs. Prior to 2019 the seneca nation health system provided behavioral and primary care services as two very separate entities and programs. There was minimal to no coordination of and collaboration on patient planning, intervention or care. In 2019 under the direction of a newly hired behavioral health director, the program began to shift making the goals of holistic and integrated health services an achievable task. The prior efforts to address the significant health crisis of the seneca people was addressed using the hope unit, which solely focused on a patient's medical appointments and medical referrals. The unit had medical social workers and medical case managers to assist individuals with only their medical aspects and follow through. The hope unit was under the medical division until about 2017 when the program was transferred to the behavioral health unit. The philosophy was that this program should integrate the medical and the behavioral components to address the CO-occurring health needs. In 2019 the new behavioral health director propelled the hope unit into a further diversified and integrated initiative, changing the name from hope to the care collaboration unit. Today this unit has two clinical care coordinators, one care collaboration supervisor, four care collaboration case managers and one elder disability case manager. This team is still grounded in primarily addressing the medical issues of patients, but there is momentum around this team becoming holistically mindful. All of these efforts have laid the ground work for the proposed behavioral health integration initiative for this funding.