Content area
Full Text
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
* Nurse-managed, integrated clinics offer access, affordability, and quality to the health care environment.
* The integration of mental health and primary care is a holistic, comprehensive model that addresses the complicated needs of those with mental illness.
* As nurses increase their education in leadership, financial management, and business, there is a correlating increase in the number of nurse-managed clinics.
* More research is needed to determine the financial structures that benefit sustainability of nurse-managed, integrated clinics.
* However, in an integrated review of the literature between 2000 and 2012, the data indicate nurse-managed health centers receive less federal financial support than the medically modeled federally qualified health center.
THE PATIENT PROTECTION and Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010) will increase the U.S. Government's role as a health care payer, through enhanced Medicaid and Medicare coverage to primary care providers (Abrams, Nuzum, Mika, & Lawlor, 2011). Developed to improve health care and reduce health disparities, the ACA identified nurse-managed health clinics (NMHC) as one of the initiatives to absorb the additional 32 million Americans covered by the extension of Medicaid and Medicare health insurance. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requested the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review Healthy People 2020 and provide a conceptual framework of the proposed Healthy People agenda (IOM, 2010). The committee's report, "Leading Health Indicators of Healthy People 2020," defined a health trajectory representing cumulative effects of risk factors throughout life (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Among the 24 objectives in the report, access to primary care, the reduction of coronary disease, obesity, depression, self-destructive behaviors, and substance abuse are of prime importance. The World Federation of Mental Health (2010) released a 64-page document titled "Mental Health and Chronic Physical Illness: The Need for Continued and Integrated Care." The report is a collection of empirical evidence and summaries that correlate mental health and the four major chronic illnesses: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and respiratory diseases. The conclusion is a need for integrated health care that provides mental health within primary health care clinics.
It is imperative advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) work to the fullest extent of their education and training (IOM, 2010) to help alleviate the workforce shortage. Further investigation of...