Developing the Embedded Behavioral Health Checklists

Abstract

The Army Embedded Behavioral Health (EBH) model of care was designed to increase access to care and reduce stigma around care seeking by locating care at the point of need. The model makes the EBH clinic the nexus of clinical behavioral health care for patients that fall within that clinic’s catchment area. The aligned providers (and the care team as a whole) serve as the principal source of information for command teams about the mental health of the enrollee. Using our field research experiences, we codified the unique challenges in both the planning phase of EBH implementation, and the implementation phase in the form of two checklists that can be used to better manage the change process. The planning phase checklist is owned by an Installation’s Behavioral Health (BH) Chief, while the implementation phase checklist is owned by an Installation’s EBH Team Lead. In this document we describe both checklists, and include research findings and examples that illustrate the importance of each item on the list.