Chicken-and-egg problem. People complain there aren't enough professionals to do the work, but the truth is that the healthcare funding system -- especially Medicaid -- does not create the kind of market incentives that would attract providers.
I agree that there are a whole lot more market incentives we could embrace that would bring more clinicians to the table. However, and I think this speaks more to structure than anything else, is that we have to have those clinicians also positioned to be in the right place to help people e.g. primary care, schools. More does not solve the problem if they are still in the same places/structure.
While change across the board is clearly necessary, I’m curious — are there any particular systems or macro-level policies in Well Being Trust’s framework you think would have especially large bang for your metaphoric buck in terms of positive impact?
Chicken-and-egg problem. People complain there aren't enough professionals to do the work, but the truth is that the healthcare funding system -- especially Medicaid -- does not create the kind of market incentives that would attract providers.
I agree that there are a whole lot more market incentives we could embrace that would bring more clinicians to the table. However, and I think this speaks more to structure than anything else, is that we have to have those clinicians also positioned to be in the right place to help people e.g. primary care, schools. More does not solve the problem if they are still in the same places/structure.
While change across the board is clearly necessary, I’m curious — are there any particular systems or macro-level policies in Well Being Trust’s framework you think would have especially large bang for your metaphoric buck in terms of positive impact?
Absolutely. I'll give you two: The first, which I references above to Tom is to better integrate mental health clinicians throughout our clinical and community systems. This means that when people are in need of care, it's there for them without them having to slog through a system that bounces them around. Second, we equip entire communities with skills to better tackle mental health and addiction. This may be the most radical upstream strategy I can think of (and it's evidence-based!). Doing either of these could have a huge bang for the buck. We outline some of the policy recs for primary care here: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/download/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/BPC_Behavioral-Health-Integration-report_R02.pdf and you can see one way to begin to think differently about the workforce here: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2021/feb/making-it-easy-get-mental-health-care-examples-abroad and here: https://thinkbiggerdogood.org/enhancing-the-capacity-of-the-mental-health-and-addiction-workforce-a-framework/