Social Work in Primary Care Intervention
The Social Work in Primary Care Study, funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, is a collaborative project with Boston University and Kaiser Permanente’s Long Beach Clinic. This project developed and tested an enhanced social work care management intervention with frail older adults in primary care that is designed to reduce hospitalization and improve patient outcomes. At the core of the intervention is the use of intensive Problem-Solving Therapy, a validated behavioral change approach shown to be effective in treating depression and other psychosocial problems. This approach emphasizes mutually agreed upon goals for improving the patient’s health status and promoting his/her independence. Behavioral change approaches like PST provide patients with the resources and tools to manage and maintain their health status, and have been shown to reduce use of hospital, Emergency Department, and other more costly forms of treatment. The problem we are attempting to address is the lack of coordination between social workers and primary care physicians. Older adults are primarily treated by primary care physicians for a range of problems, both physical and mental, and many of these doctors are already over burdened and are not able to provide the older patient the care they need in relation to psychological or psychosocial issues. Therefore, we anticipate that adding a program of social work care coordination in primary care that incorporates Problem Solving Therapy (PST) will lead to improved client outcomes and reduced hospitalization for frail elders. This is a randomized controlled clinical trial. The study will compare outcomes for patients randomly assigned to the social work care management program with outcomes for patients receiving usual primary care. Final results are expected in the Spring of 2008.
