Should Mental Healthcare Be Considered Primary Care?

“We want healthcare to be personalized,” says Anil Singh, MD, MPH, FCC, senior vice president and executive medical director of population and curated health for Highmark Health, which announced the collaboration at last week’s HLTH conference in Las Vegas. “And we want to be proactive” in addressing health concerns before they become serious.

Singh says the program mirrors a nationwide trend to shift away from episodic care and toward a value-based approach of whole-person care, or what Highmark calls its Living Health strategy. The idea is to bunch together a collection of services aimed at not only addressing immediate concerns, but chronic and preventive care as well.

“Expanding access and making it easier for members to engage with a personalized treatment plan helps us intervene earlier, driving a cultural shift in the behavioral health space and cost savings, which Highmark Health reinvests in the consumer experience as part of our Living Health model,” he said in a press release accompanying the HLTH press conference.

The key to the collaboration is that behavioral health becomes a part of the primary care platform, rather than an added service.

“What we don’t want is to have a bunch of apps sitting on a person’s smartphone,” he said.

As more and more health systems look to integrate mental health and primary care, leadership will be taking a hard look at ROI. Singh said Highmark is concerned first and foremost about expanding access to care, with a platform that offers many more access points for members, including children, teens, and those in rural areas. Beyond that, they’ll take a good look at quality and outcomes, ranging from follow-up care to hospitalizations.