PRICARe model and its implementation process

In November 2008 the Colorado Health Foundation funded the establishment of a new integrated primary care and mental health services project in Denver, CO. The project, Promoting Resources for Integrated Care and Recovery (PRICARe), would be implemented within the Mental Health Center of Denver (MHCD), a large public mental health agency and would employ a primary care physician who is on the faculty of the Dept. of Family Medicine of the University of Colorado. The population to be served by the project would be seriously mentally ill persons who have health insurance under the auspices of Colorado ACCESS, a Behavioral Health Organization which has a Medicaid contract to provide both health and mental health services to many MHCD clients This presentation reports the results of the process evaluation of the implementation of this collaborative project.

The process evaluation collected interview data from key informants that included PRICARe management and staff and observations of most management meetings. These data were supplemented with documents generated during the implementation process. These documents included meeting minutes and email notes among management and between PRICAREe medical staff and MHCD mental health staff.

Evaluation findings indicated that while this innovative project was successfully implemented, the process of integrating three systems took longer than anticipated and presented substantial challenges. The numerous steps toward PRICARe' establishment and significant challenges will be reported. The presentation will conclude with a description of the project's structure and extent of integration at the end of the initial implementation period.