Behavioral Health Support for Primary Care

Yes. Collaborative care is the most rigorously evidence-based model for treating depression and anxiety in primary care, supported by more than 90 randomized controlled trials showing it outperforms usual care on symptom improvement and is cost-effective. It is endorsed by bodies such as the American Psychiatric Association and recognized by CMS, which created dedicated reimbursement for it.

The reason it works is structural rather than anecdotal. Every patient is tracked to a measurable target with validated rating scales, treatment is intensified when a patient stalls, and a consulting psychiatrist reviews the caseload, so improvement is driven by the whole panel reaching response and remission rather than by which patients happen to follow up. Integral Health delivers this proven model and adds AI-enabled coordination so the same evidence base can be scaled to more patients.

No. Integral Health supplies the behavioral care managers and consulting psychiatrists, embeds them into your existing workflow, and runs the behavioral health layer underneath your practice, so your providers keep seeing patients while we own the registry, the documentation, and the billing.

Concretely, your team does not have to:

• Hire, train, or supervise behavioral health staff
• Build or manage the patient registry and measurement-based care workflow
• Track time, code, or bill the monthly CoCM codes
• Learn a separate system, since results surface in the tools they already use

The platform's AI-enabled coordination absorbs the operational lift that normally makes collaborative care hard to staff and sustain, so adding the program does not mean adding tasks or headcount for your team.

The clinical care is delivered by board-certified psychiatrists and licensed behavioral care managers, working alongside your primary care providers as one team. The consulting psychiatrist reviews the caseload and advises on treatment, while the behavioral care manager handles direct patient contact, follow-up, and care coordination, virtually or in clinic.

Clinicians are licensed in the states where patients are served, and they own every clinical decision. The Integral Health platform supports this team but never substitutes for their judgment, so patients receive specialist-informed care through the primary care relationship they already trust.

Yes, Medicare pays for collaborative care, and so do Medicaid and a growing list of commercial payers. CoCM is billed monthly based on the time the care team spends managing each patient, using a defined set of CPT codes:

• 99492 for the initial month of CoCM
• 99493 for each subsequent month
• 99494 as an add-on for additional time
• G2214 for shorter increments of CoCM time
• 99484 for general behavioral health integration where CoCM does not apply

Medicaid and commercial coverage vary by state and plan, and Integral Health manages those payer-specific requirements for you. We handle the time tracking, coding, and revenue-cycle work so documentation meets each code's time thresholds and claims are audit-ready. Because the model is reimbursable, collaborative care is designed to be financially sustainable rather than a net new cost center.

Collaborative care lowers total cost of care by identifying and treating behavioral health conditions early, before they drive avoidable medical spend. Untreated depression and anxiety worsen chronic disease and raise utilization, so resolving them upstream reduces downstream costs such as avoidable emergency department visits and inpatient admissions, and improves control of comorbid conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

Because every patient is tracked to measurable improvement, the model directly supports shared-savings, ACO, and risk-based contracts: it improves outcomes, closes behavioral health quality gaps for HEDIS- and Stars-type measures, and produces the population-level reporting payers and ACOs need to prove impact. The program is also reimbursable under dedicated CoCM codes, so it largely funds itself rather than acting as a net new cost center.

Behavioral health integration (BHI) is the broad category of bringing mental health care into primary care, and the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) is its most evidence-based, structured form. General BHI can be relatively light-touch, while CoCM adds three defining ingredients that general BHI does not require.

The distinguishing features of CoCM are a designated behavioral care manager, a consulting psychiatrist who reviews the caseload, and a shared registry driving measurement-based care to a target. These map to different billing pathways as well: CoCM is billed under its own monthly codes, while general BHI uses code 99484. Integral Health delivers full CoCM and uses the BHI pathway where it fits a patient's needs.

Integral Health gives you a complete collaborative care program, including the clinical team, the technology, and the billing, without the cost and risk of recruiting and managing behavioral health staff yourself. Hiring in-house means sourcing scarce psychiatrists and care managers, building a registry and measurement-based care workflow, and standing up CoCM billing before you see any return.

We provide all of that as an embedded program, and our AI-enabled platform lets a lean clinical team manage a larger panel than a traditional in-house build of the same size. Your team gets the upside of integrated behavioral health while we carry the staffing, operational, and revenue-cycle burden.

Most practices implement collaborative care and go live in weeks, not months, because Integral Health runs the end-to-end setup and the lift on your side stays minimal. Implementation follows a clear set of phases:

• Scoping plus IT and security review, including the BAA
• Embedding the behavioral care team into your workflow
• Connecting the EHR and registry
• Identifying and enrolling eligible patients
• Go-live, followed by an ongoing outcomes-reporting cadence

Patients are tracked from day one with validated instruments on the registry, so measurement-based care and outcomes reporting are live the moment the program is. The exact timeline depends mainly on EHR integration depth and patient-identification readiness, and you start seeing engagement and symptom data from the first enrolled patients rather than waiting for a long ramp.