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Behavioral health homes draw on two concepts that are gaining momentum in health care – the medical “home,” in which patients have a health care provider who takes on a larger role in coordinating their care, and bringing together primary care and behavioral health. But most of those efforts center on primary care practices, either as the site of patients’ medical home or where mental health services are delivered. The premise behind behavioral health homes is that, for some people with serious mental illness, it makes more sense to take the opposite approach – using the behavioral health treatment system as people’s home base and coordinating medical care from there. (Levin Becker, 9/9)

Congressional efforts to overhaul the mental health system have more momentum than at any time since the 2012 shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school by an unbalanced young man, with leading measures introduced in the House and Senate that seek to address access, treatment and privacy. But the question of whether to tie millions of dollars in funding to states’ willingness to force some people with serious illnesses into outpatient treatment programs revives sticky questions about patients’ rights that divide advocates, complicating prospects for a consensus. (Attias, 9/8)