Electronic Winter 2023 | Issue 57

State Legislative Update

By: Mark Peysakhovich, IPS Legislative Consultant

Please Help Spread the News: The Psychiatric Collaborative Care Model Can Greatly Increase Access to Mental Health Care in Illinois!

For me, 2023 has been the year of the “Mental Health Crisis” in America. While the fact that our mental health system has not kept up with demand is nothing new, the level of attention this problem is receiving has increased exponentially over the last few years. In large part, this development is powered by two major factors: 1) As the world faces one crisis after another, demand for mental health services has exploded. 2) As the whole concept of mental health becomes less stigmatized and stigmatizing, more and more people are willing to publicly talk about the problems they have faced in getting appropriate care for themselves or their loved ones.

Looking at the relevant media coverage nationwide, it has been encouraging that the industry is willing to have difficult conversations about the vast scale of unmet demand, as well as the systemic problems hampering their efforts to expand services. At the same time, most providers are much better about acknowledging the problems than they are at articulating meaningful and tangible solutions. Indeed, while the need is always front and center, solutions to deal with this problem “at scale” have been much harder to come by.

Now a new model of care presents health care providers in the state of Illinois with an opportunity to significantly increase access to mental health care by integrating it into primary care settings. Not only that, but the psychiatric collaborative care model (CoCM) also gives mental health providers an

immediately tangible and scalable solution that can actually move the needle by using primary care providers as force multipliers to significantly increase access to psychiatric treatment. Indeed, we know that primary care physicians already serve as managers of psychiatric disorders; two-thirds of patients with depression receive treatment for their depression in the primary care setting. CoCM provides the infrastructure to facilitate and formalize those practices.

CoCM is a specific type of integrated care to treat common mental health conditions in medical settings such as primary care. The tradition of silos for mental health has created a tremendous impediment for patients, and integration provides an opportunity to address it. Integrating psychiatric care into primary care has been shown to be a cost-effective and systematic approach to improving health outcomes for patients with both physical and behavioral health conditions.

There is strong evidence that integration of care can also improve access, achieve parity, address stigma, and decrease disparities in psychiatric care. That’s why IPS was especially proud to work with state officials to make Illinois the first state in the country to enact a law several years ago that requires private and public insurance programs to reimburse such collaboration by implementing this care model. Now, this model of care has specific CPT Codes that can be used to bill for services reimbursed in Illinois by Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance.  

Unfortunately, many Illinois health care providers and institutions are not yet aware of the CoCM and only a few have moved toward implementation. That’s why psychiatrists have to lead the way by promoting widespread CoCM adoption statewide. The next time you hear talk of a shortage of psychiatric services, let folks know that there is a viable solution to help cure what ails our mental health care system!