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MHMR E-Merge Integrated Behavioral Health Program
The Integrated Behavioral Health Program - E-Merge Program is a collaborative program involving the City of Austin's Federally Qualified Community Health Care Centers (CHC) and the Austin Travis County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center (ATCMHMR). The E-Merge program integrates behavioral health care services within the primary health care clinics in an effort to comprehensively address the needs of the patient population. The goal of the program is to assist patients in achieving both improved physical health and behavioral health care functioning by concurrently addressing their expressed needs.
Behavioral health providers are integrated into the primary health care team in an effort to provide timely, culturally responsive, seamless and comprehensive health care services. The behavioral health care providers utilize brief therapy approaches incorporating cognitive behavioral and/or interpersonal therapies to assist patients challenged by mild to moderate behavioral disorders and substance abuse disorders. This service model facilitates the behavioral health providers to not only meet the demands of the fast paced primary clinic setting, but to also serve more patients on a daily basis.
The treatment model utilized includes the following benefits:
• 30-minute initial intake/assessment session
• 30-minute follow-up treatment sessions
• Supportive group counseling sessions
• Average number of treatment sessions ranges from 4-6 encounters. Clinicians have the flexibility to provide additional sessions when clinically indicated to address the patient's needs.
• Coordination with the medical provider to ensure that the patient's physical health and behavioral health care needs are met. This may include assessment for and monitoring the response to psychiatric medications.
• Receive cognitive-behavioral and/or interpersonal therapy models to address functional needs
• Enhancement of Self-Management, personal care skills enhancement, patient education,
referral to community resources, and continuity of care services
• Referral and coordination with specialty behavioral health services or psychiatric emergency services provided through ATCMHMR. (This coordination is facilitated by the fact that all behavioral health providers are also members of the ATCMHMR Behavioral Health Care Team.)
• Psychiatric consultation provided on-site in the primary care clinics by an ATCMHMR contract psychiatrist.
Behavioral health services are currently being provided in thirteen (13) primary health care clinics through Austin-Travis county. The behavioral health providers deliver services to adults and children in individual, group, family, and couples sessions. Behavioral health providers are required to be bi-lingual in Spanish, with Master's degrees or higher and licensed to practice in the State of Texas as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Licensed Professional Counselor, or a Licensed Marriage and Family Counselor.
Future efforts for the program include enhancing relationships with local universities to provide internship opportunities, creating research capabilities or collaborations to better inform the practice model and seeking additional resources to develop care coordinator positions to assist in more comprehensive service linkage and service delivery.
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