Over the past year, La Rabida has focused on expanding the reach of our integrated behavioral health services. The ultimate goal of integration is to eliminate the boundaries between medical and behavioral health care. By providing behavioral health care to children during their medical appointments and in a medical provider setting, the stigma associated with these services has been greatly reduced. Our expert team of behavioral health clinicians works within our outpatient clinics alongside each patient’s medical team to identify a child’s needs at the earliest opportunity to improve the quality and comprehensive care we provide.

During new patient visits in our primary care clinics, children are screened for their behavioral health needs. This allows our team to effectively identify children in need of services at an early stage. If a child shows signs of need, our clinicians work in partnership with the family to develop a plan of care.

This model of behavioral health treatment benefits our patients and families in a number of ways. Our “one-stop shopping” approach to healthcare allows us to increase access to care for families. By combining appointments into one visit, our families can see all their clinicians in a single trip. Because many families have evolving schedules and transportation can be a challenge for some, this one visit makes care more manageable.

The integration reduces the stigma surrounding behavioral health treatment. Because a child will be seen by their behavioral health clinician during a standard medical appointment in a medical provider setting, we are able to normalize emotional and behavioral health care. Our overarching goal is to create a culture of care where a child’s emotional and behavioral health and needs are viewed as an important aspect of their overall health and that screening and treatment for those needs is a normal and routine part of providing care at La Rabida.

By utilizing this strategy, we have found great success in reaching more children, identifying behavioral health needs sooner, and improving the access to behavioral health services.

This story was featured in the March 2020 issue of Currents, La Rabida's monthly newsletter. To view the March issue of Currents, click here.