Lori Raney, MD: Integrating Collaborative Care

Psychiatrists and physicians from around the world flocked to San Francisco for the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Research was presented through posters and presentations on topics ranging from novel treatments for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and differences in treatment strategies between countries.

Lori Raney, MD, a psychiatrist and principal with Health Management Associates in CO, was one of the many psychiatrists that participated in the conference and she presented data on a variety of subjects — including topics such as integrating primary care and behavioral health and pediatric integrated care. She sat down with MD Magazine® and talked about what she thought was the most important discussion to take place at this year’s conference.

MD Mag: What is the most important discussion to take place at APA 2019?

Raney: Well the discussion has certainly been around collaborative care and the collaborative care model and best practices for doing integrated care but I think the other message that has come out is really around measurement-based care. Before, we didn't think we had tools like primary care has a hemoglobin A1c test for diabetes or they have a blood pressure cuff they can use if you have high blood pressure. We really didn't think we had adequate tools to measure the outcomes of behavioral health symptoms and in the past couple of years we really have discovered that adequate tools really do exist like the Patient Health Questionnaire 9, the PHQ-9 we call it, very nice monitoring tool and it's through the collaborative care model and through all the research that's been done with that we've really discovered these easy-to-use validated tools. So, you will hear quite a bit at this meeting and in the messaging coming out around collaborative care, integrated care, and in treating behavioral health across the country that we really do have valid tools that can help us know whether or not our patients are getting better, whether or not they're well. and whether or not we need to adjust treatment because they're not showing the signs of improvement that we'd like them to see.