Assessing Collaborative Care in Mental Health Teams: Qualitative Analysis to Guide Future Implementation

The Collaborative Care Model (CCM) is an evidence-based approach for structuring care for chronic health conditions. Attempts to implement CCM-based care in a given setting depend, however, on the extent to which care in that setting is already aligned with the specific elements of CCM-based care. We therefore interviewed staff from ten outpatient mental health teams in the US Department of Veterans Affairs to determine whether care delivery was consistent or inconsistent with CCM-based care in those settings. We discuss implications of our findings for future attempts to implement CCM-based outpatient mental health care.