Guaranteeing that all Californians have timely access to culturally appropriate, evidencebased treatment for mental illness and substance use disorders that is linked to their physical health care represents a huge challenge we are not daunted, to be sure.
I think that with smart investments in ‘highimpact’ strategies, CHCF can make meaningful contributions to encourage behavioral health integration.
Accordingly a systematic commitment to improvement could create real and lasting improvements in the health status of all Americans, as Margarita Alegría and colleagues observe in their excellentarticle about reducing racial and ethnic disparities in behavioral health care. Behavioral health conditions are eminently treatable. Usually, this is why behavioral health integration in which people receive coordinated or colocated care for all their health needs has such huge implications for Medi Cal, California’s largest health support program. CHCF is working to advance most of these efforts. Of the 5 of ‘MediCal’ enrollees who have the highest costs, 45percentage have a serious mental illness.
At the state level and locally, ‘Medi Cal’ is engaged in multiple initiatives to move ward behavioral health integration.
When they need it, we work to ensure that people have access to the care they need at a price they can afford.
CHCF is dedicated to advancing meaningful, measurable improvements in the way the health care delivery system provides care to the people of California, particularly those with low incomes and those whose needs are not well served by the status quo. Those legal problems indeed a significant impediment to collaboration, across providers and across sectors. CHCF published a paper on this pic last year it’s available on this site at and we’re currently supporting the state HHS Agency in their work to develop statewide guidance on this issue.
Recognition of the significant human and financial costs of behavioral health disorders, gether with recent implementation of federal and state laws enhancing coverage of mental health services, have lifted behavioral health to the p of the nation’s health policy agenda.
This finding was featured in amid the 29 impressive articles published in the new behavioral health themed issue of Health Affairs.
While as pointed out by a report in Health Affairs, with spending estimated at $ 201billion, in 2013, mental disorders pped the list of most costly conditions.
CHCF proudly supported this issue of the journal, and I invite you to read key articles. He had been hospitalized with preventable pneumocystis pneumonia and was breathing on a ventilator. He had not been taking the retroviral medications that will have reduced his risk, and he wasn’t taking psychiatric drugs to manage his bipolar condition, despite he was HIV positive.
He is fortunate to have survived the pneumonia, and thanks to San Francisco’s sophisticated system of community based, integrated care for HIV patients, day he is successfully taking care of himself and getting the care he needs.