September 2015 Newsletter

Hello Friends of IBHI,

 

Thanks for leaving us your e-mail address. You don’t receive many mailings from us because we don’t send out mail just to have a connection. Since you signed up we thought we’d send a brief summary of activities and encourage you to respond.

 

IBHI continues to strive to help care providers achieve better results, and believes collaborative approaches are most likely to achieve these ends. Work is continuing on ways to reduce readmissions of people admitted to hospitals for behavioral health reasons, and also to reduce readmissions of people admitted for non-behavioral health reasons who also have a behavioral health problem. Watch for details and let IBHI know if this interests you.

 

In addition this year it seems probable there will be three offerings of the IBHI Seminar on Improving Emergency Department Care for People with Behavioral Health Problems. If you know anyone interested in the topic please have them check the website at www.ibhi.net for more information. We will, as usual, be holding the Seminar on Wednesday December 2 in Las Vegas, just prior to the two day National Update On Behavioral Health Emergencies.   Here’s the link for the Mt Sinai National Update http://www.sinai.org/content/6th-annual-behavioral-emergencies-conference

 

IBHI has been a strong proponent of the importance of improving, utilizing and publicizing data on outcomes in behavioral health care. It is our belief there is every reason to pursue much better data use and disclosure. A new Outcomes Measurement Interest Group has been started and additional members are most welcome. The objective is to share efforts at using data to improve results. If you’d like to join send Peter ( peter@ibhi.net) a note to that effect.

 

The work group of which IBHI is an active part continues work on helping people recover beyond supported housing. Applications for funding the project have been submitted and the ad hoc working group remains committed to developing this effort.

 

One of the parts of the healthcare field most in development now is the Accountable Care Organization system. This emerging effort to meet the triple aim of improved care, improved public health and reduced cost is going to need a major contribution from behavioral health to achieve its goals.   IBHI hopes to be able to help achieve this integration with the least amount of disruption.

 

If you have ideas in the area of improving behavioral health quality and outcome let us all know about them by writing to Peter.

 

For IBHI I am

Peter Brown

Executive Director