Trustee Resources on Behavioral Health

These AHA Trustee Services resources are designed to help hospital and health system boards navigate behavioral health issues including employee burnout, behavioral health integration, acute care, and opioid use disorder.

Burnout in Health Care
Burnout is a real issue affecting nearly half of us in health care. It is essential that hospital leadership—administrators, board members, physician and clinical leaders—open a dialogue and begin working together to find the solutions that will work best in their organization — solutions that will meet their needs and directly address their specific challenges.

Combating Prescription Opioid Abuse
While prescription opioids can be a safe and necessary part of pain management, these drugs also carry serious risks of harm because of the potential for addiction, misuse, overdose and death. Learn more about hospitals' and lawmakers' efforts to address the opioid epidemic, and its toll on patients and the health of their communities.

Mental Illness and Acute Care
Health care institutions that coordinate the delivery of services with nontraditional partners will not only meet the needs of their community but do so at a lower overall cost.

Collaborating for Behavioral Health
The growing recognition that mind and body are intertwined is inspiring hospitals to integrate care for both. The emerging models encompass inpatient and outpatient services for physical and behavioral health and are able to reach more people despite a shortage of behavioral health specialists. They also enable hospitals to manage patient populations better.

Three Ways Hospitals Are Improving Behavioral Health Care
Years of deep cuts to mental health care services have left ill-equipped hospital emergency departments struggling to care for untreated patients. Three organizations confronted the problem head-on by integrating behavioral health into primary and specialty care, screening and supporting vulnerable families, and developing expansive partnerships with other organizations.

Integrating Behavioral and Physical Health Through Primary Care
Executives at three leading organizations have shared the lessons learned from their success at integrating behavioral and primary care. They use different approaches, but each emphasized “integration” — challenging, but essential — as the key.