[PC-BH-Integration] Outcome measures: Colocation of primary care ina behavioral health care home

[BARBARA COHEN]

Charlotte,

Thanks very much for your response. It was very helpful, particularly
the comment about the challenges of keeping schedules full. Our volume
projections assume a slow build up and plenty of marketing to staff and
consumers prior to the clinic opening in September. We have a consumer
base of  1,000+ in Philadelphia, half of whom indicated that they would
be interested in using the service.  But the number of these individuals
who will actually enroll is, of course, unknown.

 Our plan calls for a Physician's Assistant on-site 5 days a week,
supervised by a doctor who will initially be on-site 1 day a week. There
will  be three support staff. Labs will be pulled onsite. The clinic
will use an electronic record.   Consumers who need a higher level of
care than the satellite clinic can provide will be referred to one of
the FQHC's full scope sites.

I'll keep in touch as we proceed.

Best regards,
Barbara
>>> Charlotte.Ipach at cmhcinc.org 06/02/10 9:53 AM >>>
Barbara,
We have recently (in March) opened a primary care clinic that serves
adult consumers with SMI within our mental health center. It is
staffed
with our own employees: a part-time APN dually certified in family
medicine and behavioral health and an LPN functioning as a Nurse Care
Manager. Since we don't have any FQHCs in our area, we were challenged
in finding a physician partner. We have contracted with a local
emergency room physician for up to 12 hours a week to collaborate and
supervise our APN and see consumers who are out of the APN's scope of
practice. Also, another local physician has agreed to "back-up" the ER
doc if he is unavailable or if one of the consumers needs to be
admitted
to the local hospital (The ER doc doesn't have admitting
privileges.)The
clinic is currently only operating 20 hours per week.

We are monitoring HTN, Cholesterol and Diabetes (HgA1c) as our outcome
measures. We are currently implementing an integrated electronic
health
record that is used by both primary care and mental health service
providers within our agency.

One of our biggest challenges has been in keeping our schedules full.
Although a handful of consumers come to the clinic regularly, we are
only seeing about 4 consumers each week. We had a kick-off Health Fair
to get consumers and staff interested and involved. We've marketed the
service to our case managers and outpatient therapists to help us
identify consumers who can benefit from our primary care clinic. But,
business is slow and everyone who has done this before told us to
expect
it to be that way. We need to keep drumming up business. Hopefully, it
will catch on soon.

If you have any other questions for me, feel free to phone or email me
directly at charlotte.ipach at cmhcinc.org 

Charlotte R. Ipach, RN MSN
Director of Inpatient and Primary Care Integration Services
Community Mental Health Center
285 Bielby Road
Lawrenceburg, Indiana 47025
voice 812-532-3423
fax 812-537-0194



-----Original Message-----
From: pc-bh-integration-bounces at lists101.his.com 
[mailto:pc-bh-integration-bounces at lists101.his.com] On Behalf Of
BARBARA
COHEN
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 4:32 PM
To: pc-bh-integration at lists101.his.com 
Subject: [PC-BH-Integration] Outcome measures: Colocation of primary
care ina behavioral health care home

We are pursuing a pilot that will involve the co-location of an FQHC
satellite primary care clinic in a behavioral health organization that
serves individuals with serious mental illnesses. The goal of this
pilot
is to provide integrated, highly accessible, preventive, primary, and
behavioral health care to individuals with serious mental illnesses
who
receive services in the public behavioral health system.

Is anyone involved in a similar type of partnership? If so, what were
the greatest challenges you experienced in the first year of
operations?
What kinds of outcome measures did you establish for this co-located
care model?

Thank you,
Barbara A. Cohen MSW LSW
Director of Special Projects
Behavioral Health Services
Horizon House
120 South 30th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215/386.3838 Ext. 383

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Thank you very much.