Large Reductions in Suicide Risk, Attempts and Deaths

From our partner organization Shatterproof, with the Bowman Family Foundation.

Most people who die by suicide have seen a health care provider in the year before their death usually in primary care. This issue brief gathers three real-world studies showing what happens when primary care practices deliver the Collaborative Care Model: suicide risk falls by half, and attempts and deaths fall by a quarter.

The studies are not trials in controlled settings. They are results from large health systems treating ordinary patients.

Key Findings from the Three Studies

Study	Setting	Result
Concert Health — Addressing Suicide Risk: A Study of Dose Response in Collaborative Care	Community primary care practices using a Collaborative Care service organization	56% reduction in suicide risk among patients receiving Collaborative Care.
University of Pennsylvania Health System — Change in Suicidal Ideation, Depression, and Anxiety Following Collaborative Care	Penn Integrated Care, 50+ primary care practices	52% reduction in suicidal ideation, alongside reductions in depression and anxiety.
Kaiser Permanente — Effectiveness of Integrating Suicide Care in Primary Care	19 primary care practices	25% reduction in suicide attempts and deaths in the 90 days after a visit.

What This Means for the Field

Every American with depression has a primary care doctor they already see. Meadows Institute estimates that if every one of them had Collaborative Care, approximately 14,000 lives could be saved each year from suicide.

For Path Forward’s Collaborative Care work:

• The model saves lives, not just money. The cost case for Collaborative Care is well established; this brief adds the mortality case.
• Primary care is where prevention happens. The visit people already have is the one that can catch risk early.
• Scaling is a funding problem. The billing codes exist in Medicare, all four BUCA plans, and 37 state Medicaid programs. What practices lack is start-up support.

The call to action is simple: seed the start-up costs of Collaborative Care in local health systems, and let the codes sustain it.