Date of Completion

2017

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Psychology

Thesis Type

Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors

First Advisor

Rodger Kessler, Ph. D, ABPP

Second Advisor

John Green, Ph. D

Keywords

Behavioral Health, Integration, Primary Care, Patient

Abstract

Health care is currently experiencing a significant amount of reform in order to improve multiple aspects of care. These reforms can be summed up as the Triple Aim. The Triple Aim is a widely accepted model for improving health care in three main areas including patient experience, clinical practice, and cost effectiveness. This current work strives to contribute to the patient experience level of the Triple Aim. In recent years medicine has seen an expanded importance of behavioral health care within primary care. A research group in UVM’s College of Medicine has created a measure to assess the level of behavioral health integration within primary care from a practice level perspective called the Practice Integration Profile (PIP). Working with this group, a decision was made to develop a tool to assess the patient perception of integrated behavioral health, and this work began that process. A literature review identified key patient preferences in integrated care. These preferences were contrasted with the PIP domains and reviewed by the PIP development team. A focus group of interested patients evaluated the identified patient preferences within relevant PIP domains. Questions for a patient experience survey of integration were drafted and reviewed by the research team for relevance to the identified patient preferences and the PIP domains. A pilot patient experience survey was developed using REDcap. A sample of patients reviewed the survey for readability and clarity of questions and identified a core group of 26 questions. Future work in this project involves further development of the measure and piloting the survey in practices who have taken the PIP survey. This data may allow practices to compare their own evaluation of integration efforts to their patient’s perceptions of integrated behavioral care.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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