Results to be disclosed at ‘controversial connections’ workshop during CLP 2022
A survey developed by ACLP’s Interdisciplinary Education Subcommittee is designed to examine the interdisciplinary composition of C-L Psychiatry services and their educational needs.
Interdisciplinary, or collaborative, care was the cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s new mental health intervention package in his State of the Union address. Removing barriers to the adoption of the Psychiatry-based collaborative care model (CoCM) is one of its objectives.
In subsequent testimony to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health (which reviewed numerous bills to bolster the nation’s mental health system), Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD, FACLP (ACLP president 2018-19), focused on mental health parity and the CoCM model.
“The Collaborative Care Model enables a single psychiatrist to work alongside a care manager and a primary care doctor to provide consultation,” she said. “Rather than seeing four to six patients in one or two hours, in this model psychiatrists can provide consultation to as many as 50 to 70 patients in the same amount of time.”
Dr. Brendel detailed other CoCM benefits, such as reducing the stigma of requiring patients to make separate mental health appointments and helping to save costs. “It really is a model that has everything and can be implemented very quickly within the existing workforce,” she said.
It is vitally important that behavioral and primary care becomes integrated, Dr. Brendel added. “Population- and evidence-based integrated care models hold great promise to enhance access for the millions of Americans who struggle with undiagnosed and untreated mental health and substance use disorders.”
The ACLP survey, sent to C-L Psychiatry service directors with a closing date of the end of July, asks about the composition of existing C-L Psychiatry services and the educational needs of any non-physician providers. Data will be analysed by researchers at Yale University and results presented during the subcommittee’s workshop Non-physician professionals and the Academy of C-L Psychiatry: Making controversial connections—a forum for discussion and debate at CLP 2022 in November.