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For people with mental health problems, care can be elusive

March 21, 2011|Michelle Andrews | Kaiser Health News

The health-care overhaul, with its emphasis on medical homes and accountable care organizations that take responsibility for managing a patient's health rather than just providing medical services, offers promising models for integration, experts agree.

In clinical psychologist Benjamin Miller's primary care "dream world," mental health providers work alongside primary-care physicians, in the same office. Miller is an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado's school of medicine in Denver. Part of his job is to integrate mental health into the family medicine department's clinical, education and research functions.

"There's a range of mental health needs that will be seen in primary care," he says. "You can't tease it out from the other conditions that an individual is facing."

-Have questions for Michelle Andrews? Write to her at khnquestions@kff.org.

-Andrews writes for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service and a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan healthcare policy research organization. Neither Kaiser Health News nor the foundation is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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