A number of recent changes in the Medicare program appear designed to make it easier for beneficiaries to pursue behavioral health assistance.

Among them:

• A greater focus on the integration of physical and behavioral health.
• A greater willingness to pay for digital behavioral health interventions.
• The release of several requests for information addressing behavioral health services.
• The introduction of new behavioral health procedure and billing codes.
• The inclusion of behavioral health in new Medicare models, including the LEAD (Long-Term Enhanced ACO Design) Model, the ACCESS (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) Model, and the MAHA ELEVATE (Make America Healthy Again, Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-Based Approaches Through Evidence)

Learn more about these and possible future efforts to make behavioral health services more accessible to the Medicare population – and by developing effective role models, possibly to other groups as well – from the Commonwealth Fund article “Innovation in Payment to Help Patients Get Needed Mental Health Care.”