Moving beyond referrals to strengthen late-life depression care: a qualitative examination of primary care clinic and community-based organization partnerships

Background National guidelines have called for greater integration of primary care and behavioral health services, with more recent attention to social care and community-based services. Under growing resource constraints healthcare organizations have tended to rely on referrals to external entities to address social care needs. Traditional referral models, however, may not be equipped to provide for the complex needs of older adults with depression. The Care Partners Project was designed to strengthen late-life depression care through integrated partnerships between primary care clinics and community-based organizations. We sought to understand how these integrated partnerships, with shared tasks and accountability across organizations, changed the nature of depression care for older adults. Methods We conducted 65 in-depth, semi-structured interviews and six focus groups with service providers involved in the project, including care managers, primary care providers, and psychiatric consultants, and applied inductive and deductive qualitative thematic analysis to develop themes around participants’ experiences with the partnered initiative. Results We found the partnerships established by the Care Partners Project reshaped late-life depression care in two ways: (1) bidirectional communication across organizations facilitated greater recognition among providers of intersecting medical and social needs associated with late-life depression; and (2) depression care became more coordinated and effective as care teams established or strengthened relationships across organizations. Conclusions These findings highlight the ways cross-organizational health and social care partnerships that move beyond traditional referrals can strengthen late-life depression care and enhance organizational capacities.