Considerations for Improvement

Considerations for Improvement

            With the potential usefulness of primary care physicians in treatment of psychiatric illnesses and the understanding of their barriers of care, a number of considerations for improvement can be made. Among these improvements include education and training, collaboration with mental health care professionals, better insurance reimbursements, and universal use of treatment paradigms among primary care physicians treating psychiatric illnesses.

Education and Training

            The lack of education and training of psychopharmacologic treatment in the primary care setting poses to be one of the greatest barriers of quality care. There are many possible ways to insure training and education are provided to primary care physicians. Integrating psychopharmacological education in medical school and training in residency could help future physicians gain the knowledge desperately needed for better treatment. For current physicians, providing incentives for training and education could be useful. For example, paying physicians to obtain the training and education and then increasing their reimbursement rates for treating psychiatric patients may be considered. Another consideration would be for insurance panels to require education and training in credentialing for physicians who provide psychiatric care.

Integrative Care

Another consideration is utilizing integrative care models that collaborative with other mental health professionals. This would help ensure diagnoses are correct, assessments are utilized, and care is managed. It may also help increase the use of psychotherapy, where the primary care physician would have clinicians on staff or in contact to provide collaborative care.

Insurance Reimbursement

Increasing the insurance reimbursement rates for primary care physicians to treat psychiatric care may allow for more time and more proper treatment. For example, more structured assessment methods would likely be used if there were financial incentives, such as if there were billable assessment codes. Furthermore, higher reimbursement rates for extra time and effort and level of care provided might be useful.

Research Suggestions

Future research regarding the issues discussed in this paper may be useful. Research on the impact of education and training may help provide more awareness of this need. Studies on providing incentives for primary care physicians treating psychiatric patients more appropriately through training and use of assessments may be useful. Finally, qualitative studies regarding how primary care physicians experience treating depression could help our understanding of the phenomenon.