Northwestern Medicine, West Health, and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute have announced a new collaboration that will make accessing care to evidence-based mental health services faster and easier for primary care patients across Northwestern Medicine. This $8.6 million multi-year initiative from West Health will establish the Northwestern Medicine West Health Accelerator, which will provide access to comprehensive psychiatric services for primary care practices throughout Northwestern Medicine, expanding access to mental health care and promoting earlier intervention.
Across the United States and Chicagoland, the demand for high-quality treatments for the most common mental health conditions continues to grow. This collaboration with West Health will help transform mental health care by delivering efficient, effective and equitable behavioral health services to patients, while expanding access to care." Sachin Patel, MD, PhD, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern Medicine It is estimated that more than one in five U.
S. adults or 59.3 million people were living with a mental illness in 2022 and little more than half (50.
6%) received treatment within the prior year. To address the growing problem for demand in mental health services, Northwestern Medicine started its Collaborative Behavioral Health Program (CBHP) in 2018, which integrates mental health care into primary care settings to help manage population health across all .
