J Am Board Fam Med
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The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) recommends screening female patients for intimate partner violence (IPV), yet few studies inform IPV screening efforts among this population. This study examined the proportion of women who experienced IPV within the past year and the associations between IPV and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol dependence, mental health multimorbidity (ie, 2 or 3 of these conditions), and military sexual trauma (MST) among female veterans. ⋯ These findings can increase provider knowledge of the strong connection between past-year IPV and mental health conditions among female veterans. This may encourage IPV screening and facilitate appropriate referrals, treatment conceptualization, and planning within the VHA and other health care settings.
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Comparative Study
Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care: Consulting, Coordinating and Collaborating Among Professionals.
This paper sought to describe how clinicians from different backgrounds interact to deliver integrated behavioral and primary health care, and the contextual factors that shape such interactions. ⋯ Primary care and behavioral health clinicians, through their interactions, consult, coordinate, and collaborate with each other to solve patients' problems. Organizations can create integrated care environments that support these collaborations and health professions training programs should equip clinicians to execute all 3Cs routinely in practice.
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Comparative Study
Understanding Care Integration from the Ground Up: Five Organizing Constructs that Shape Integrated Practices.
To provide empirical evidence on key organizing constructs shaping practical, real-world integration of behavior health and primary care to comprehensively address patients' medical, emotional, and behavioral health needs. ⋯ Interaction among 5 organizing constructs and practice context produces diverse expressions of integrated care. These constructs provide a framework for understanding how primary care and behavioral health services can be integrated in routine practice.
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Multicenter Study
Lessons from Initiating the First Veterans Health Administration (VA) Women's Health Practice-based Research Network (WH-PBRN) Study.
The Veterans Health Administration (VA) Women's Health Practice-Based Research Network (WH-PBRN) was created to foster innovations for the health care of women veterans. The inaugural study by the WH-PBRN was designed to identify women veterans' own priorities and preferences for mental health services and to inform refinements to WH-PBRN operational procedures. Addressing the latter, this article reports lessons learned from the inaugural study. ⋯ Our experience with the inaugural WH-PBRN study demonstrated the feasibility of establishing productive relationships between local clinicians and researchers, and of recruiting a special population (women veterans) in diverse sites within an integrated health care system. This identified strengths of a PBRN approach.
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Multicenter Study
Launching a Laboratory Testing Process Quality Improvement Toolkit: From the Shared Networks of Colorado Ambulatory Practices and Partners (SNOCAP).
Family medicine and internal medicine physicians order diagnostic laboratory tests for nearly one-third of patient encounters in an average week, yet among medical errors in primary care, an estimated 15% to 54% are attributed to laboratory testing processes. From a practice improvement perspective, we (1) describe the need for laboratory testing process quality improvements from the perspective of primary care practices, and (2) describe the approaches and resources needed to implement laboratory testing process quality improvements in practice. ⋯ While practices were able to get started with guidance and a toolkit to improve laboratory testing processes, most did not seem able to achieve their quality improvement aims unassisted. Providing specific guidance tools with practice facilitation or other rapid-cycle quality improvement support may be an effective approach to improve common laboratory testing issues in primary care.