Integrated Primary Care: Organizing the Evidence.

The evidence for bringing behavioral health services into primary care can be confusing. Studies are quite varied in the types of programs assessed, what impacts are assessed, what kind of therapy is offered, for what populations, and on how broad a scale. By organizing the evidence into categories: whether the program is coordinated, co-located or integrated, whether for a targeted or non-targeted patient population, offering specified or unspecified behavioral health services, in a small scale or extensive implementation, programs can be compared more easily. By noting what sorts of impacts are reportedimproved access to services, clinical outcome, maintained improvement^ improved compliance, patient satisfaction, provider satisfaction, cost effectiveness or medical cost offset-the most comprehensive overall assessment of this important approach to patients' needs can be encouraged.