From left to right: Brenda Pruden, R.N.; Stephanie Buchinger, B.S.N., R.N.; Kirstyn Applin ,CASAC-AD; Meaghann Snyder
Second-Place Team Finger Lakes IPA (FLIPA)
The leaders of the primary care and behavioral care organizations involved in the Finger Lakes IPA in upstate New York have been working hard—and smart—on a new model integrating physical and behavioral patient care management By Mark Hagland
F
or decades now, leaders on the pro- vider side of the U.S. healthcare sys- tem have envisioned a time when the
physical and behavioral sides of patient care would be better coordinated and integrated, in order to benefit patients and improve outcomes—and yes, at the same time, dent our healthcare system’s cost curve. Yet in practice, the U.S. sys- tem remains largely fragmented, with care management and care coordination between physical and behavioral health an area filled with gaps and issues. Well, some forward-thinking people in
the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York have been working on that problem. Indeed, what they’ve come up with offers the promise of replicability nationwide and the advancements they’ve made have earned their team second place in the Healthcare Innovation 2023 Innovators Award program.
8 As FLIPA’s leaders explain, “Finger
Lakes IPA, Inc. (FLIPA) includes four- teen Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), seven behavioral health orga- nizations (providing outpatient ser- vices, peer support, care management, and specialty behavioral healthcare services including long-term residential care, detoxification, rehabilitation and respite beds, peer and family advocacy services, jail release transition programs), and a rural health network that includes eight county health departments as its members. Our diverse membership also includes social determinants of health support, such as housing, employment assistance, and benefits navigators. FLIPA currently spans 28 counties across Upstate New York. FLIPA’s mission is built on the foundation that the integration of behav- ioral health (BH), social determinants of health (SDOH) and primary care (PC) is
8
hcinnovationgroup.com | MARCH/APRIL 2023
essential to improve the health and well- ness of patients, and that failing to meet the needs in any one of these areas leads to greater challenges in the other two.” And, per all that, “FLIPA’s innovative
solution centers on the integrated acute contact
team (i-ACT). This approach
brings together Care Coordinators/Case managers from both behavioral health and primary care settings serving the same patients to function like a single integrated treatment team. I-ACT lever- ages FLIPA’s state-of-the-art population health management platform (Garage) and a set of integrative standards of care to improve outcomes and reduce barriers for patients with significant BH needs and health-related social risk factors/SDOH needs. Tools used to meet patients’ most urgent needs and stabilize their quality of life include: 1) a risk stratification model to target resources to patients most in
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