The National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s Medical Directors Institute recently published a new resource, The Comprehensive Healthcare Integration (CHI) Framework: Designing, Implementing and Sustaining Physical Health-Behavioral Health Integration. 

The purpose of this paper is to present the Comprehensive Healthcare Integration (CHI) Framework, a new framework for guiding implementation of integration of physical health (PH) and behavioral health (BH) (mental health and substance use conditions), that can help providers, payers and population managers to measure progress in organizing delivery of integrated services – referred to in this report as “integratedness” – demonstrate the value produced by progress in integrated service delivery and provide initial and sustainable financing for integration.

Integration as used herein is also inclusive of attention to social determinants of health (SDOH) and health equity for underserved populations. The new framework expands on the 8 Domains of integration and the progression of integration or “integratedness” that many BH providers are have used and focuses on a “no wrong door” or bi-directional approach to healthcare integration.  Read a blog post from the National Council’s Medical Director, Dr. Joe Parks, to learn more about the Comprehensive Health Integration Framework.