Unity Health Care (Unity) is the District’s largest network of community health centers and has committed to integrating primary care and behavioral health services since 2020.
Through Integrated Care DC, Unity leadership has engaged their primary care and behavioral health providers in evolving their services along the integrated care continuum. In addition to the collocated specialty behavioral healthcare currently provided onsite at several of their health centers, Unity is running a pilot project that embeds a behavioral health provider directly onto the care team.
Using the Primary Care Behavioral Health model of integration, the care team collaborates to identify individuals needing behavioral health services through routine screening and disease-specific clinical pathways. The behavioral health professional on the team acts as a consultant to the providers and the patients and offers primary care behavioral health services on the same day as the medical appointment.
Unity’s behavioral health team is attending training and working with Integrated Care DC coaches to develop a strategy to train and scale this model across all of their sites.
To learn more about Unity Health Care, click here!