Overview of Comprehensive Healthcare Integration (CHI) Framework

Lori Raney, M.D.

Dr. Lori Raney is a board-certified psychiatrist and Principal with Health Management Associates in Denver, Colorado. She is considered a leading authority on the collaborative care model and the bidirectional integration of primary care and behavioral health.  Her work focuses on service evaluation, gap analysis, and design and training of multidisciplinary teams to implement evidence-based practices to improve the identification and treatment of mental illness in the primary care setting and improve the health status of patients with serious mental illness behavioral health settings.  She has worked with clients implementing 2703 Health Home State Plan Amendments for behavioral health populations, state innovation models (SIM), and transforming clinical practice initiatives (TCPI), and provided training for personnel implementing Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration (PBHCI) grants. She is the editor of two books Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health and Integrated Care: A Guide for Effective Implementation. 

In addition, she has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to integration.  She was selected to be a Master Trainer for the American Psychiatric Association’s grant to train 3,500 psychiatrists in the collaborative care model and has completed the Project ECHO Immersion Training.  Her current work also includes evaluating hospitals and clinics in recognizing and developing strategies to deal with the impact of behavioral health across healthcare systems including the design and implementation of integrated care in their primary care practices. In addition, she helps clients consider the use of technology to leverage scarce behavioral health resources in their location.

Dr. Raney served for 15 years as the medical director of a community mental health center in rural Colorado, where she fostered the development of a full range of evidence-based services including the development of a telepsychiatry program, working in and deploying psychiatric providers in corrections settings, developing an inpatient psychiatric treatment unit, managing the psychiatric medical team in implementing prescribing best practices including metabolic monitoring, encouraging medication-assisted treatment of substance use disorders, and establishing hospital-based psychiatric consultation. In her administrative capacity, she has extensive experience in psychiatric medical leadership, innovative strategies for hiring and retaining the psychiatric workforce, established performance measures for good psychiatric care, and implemented strategies to meet key performance indicators required by Medicaid.  During her tenure, she led efforts to implement the collaborative care model of integrated care in diverse primary care locations including Federally Qualified Health Centers, a Rural Health Center, tribal clinics, and school-based health centers, and has served as a consultant psychiatrist at these locations. 

She has worked for over 15 years with tribal populations with the Indian Health Service in remote clinics in the Southwest and continues her clinical work with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe in Towaco, Colorado.