The Washington Integrated Care Assessment  

HealthierHere, in collaboration with The Health Care Authority, Managed Care Organizations, and other Accountable Communities of Health, has been working to create a standardized state integrative care assessment, called the WA-ICA. The WA-ICA measures integration readiness between behavioral health and primary care providers and its framework is based on continuum-based assessment tools developed by Dr. Henry Chung. Completion and implementation of the WA-ICA will help develop an improvement roadmap for clinical practices to advance integration and improve whole-person care, improve patient outcomes, and reduce the administrative burden caused by the duplication of assessments.

Analyzing the WA-ICA Survey Results with Lindsey McClellan

Since January 2023, HealthierHere has been working with local Master of Public Health candidate, Lindsey McClellan, who is serving as a Data Analysis Graduate Assistant to support data analysis related to the WA-ICA.

Learn more about Lindsey about what she's working on:

"I am originally from Tacoma, WA and am currently a second-year graduate student in the Health Systems and Population Health program at the University of Washington. At HealthierHere, I am assisting with qualitative data analysis from the initial phase of the Washington Integrated Care Assessment (WA-ICA) survey, which involved participation from primary care and behavioral health sites across Washington State. I am analyzing narrative responses from the first survey round of the ICA that was completed last summer. This analysis will help us understand what barriers and supports exist for integrating behavioral health and primary care, and can help improve future rounds of the survey. I was drawn to this project because I would like to strengthen my qualitative analysis skills, as I plan to work in qualitative or mixed-methods research in the future. Qualitative research is necessary to explain trends in complex and multi-faceted issues, such as integration, that quantitative data cannot explain alone."
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For more information about this collaboration, please contact Heeju Suh, HealthierHere’s Data Strategy Manager.‍

Want to learn more about HealthierHere’s cross-sector efforts? Click here to see more of our work and how you can get involved.

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