Care management increases the use of primary and medical care services by people with severe mental illness in community mental health settings
- 1UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Los Angeles, California, USA
- 2West Los Angeles Veteran's Administration Hospital, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Correspondence to Joan Rosenbaum Asarnow
UCLA Semel Institute, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1759, USA; jasarnow{at}mednet.ucla.edu
The primary care, access, referral and evaluation study
The primary care, access, referral and evaluation (PCARE) study is a pioneering, and to our knowledge, first-of-its-kind study. Building on the extensive literature examining collaborative care models for enhancing mental healthcare among primary care patients,1,–,4 PCARE evaluated a care management intervention for decreasing the medical morbidity and mortality of patients with severe mental illness receiving mental healthcare in a Community Mental Health Center (CMHC).
Extant data underscores the high levels of morbidity and mortality among patients with severe mental illness treated in the public sector.5 Overall, this group of patients die about 25 years earlier compared to the general population, and …
