Escalating prescription opioid use and abuse have emerged as major public health problems in Washington. Rural communities in particular have been hit hard due to their limited access to specialists. This project allows mental health specialists in urban areas to support health care providers in rural areas using videoconferencing technology. Patient evaluations and recommendations, caseload supervision, and education are all done remotely via telehealth. This project aims to establish acceptance, effectiveness, and cost-efficacy of telehealth for delivery of mental health and pain medicine care in rural primary care.
Targeted Condition: Other Mental Health
Alameda Health Consortium
Alameda County in California provides affordable health care to its uninsured residents, but primary care clinics struggle to meet the demand. The AIMS Center, in partnership with the Alameda Health Consortium, helped 30 primary care clinics develop an integrated mental health care initiative targeting depression, anxiety, and PTSD to increase the effectiveness of care. A key component of the project was determining how organizations can successfully use funding from Medicaid to implement Collaborative Care.
Mental Health Integration Program (MHIP)
The Mental Health Integration Program (MHIP), supported and administered by the Community Health Plan of Washington in partnership with Public Health -Seattle and King County, integrates mental health screening and treatment in a collaborative care model (CoCM), including psychiatric case review and consultation. MHIP collaborative care teams in Washington State safety-net primary care settings serve diverse Medicaid and uninsured populations. Since MHIP’s inception in 2007, over 50,000 individuals have received integrated mental health services. In 2007 it began as a state-funded, two-county pilot for high risk uninsured adults in King and Pierce counties, but MHIP expanded statewide in early 2009 to include over 130 primary care clinics.
MHIP uses a patient registry (CMTS) to track and measure patient goals and clinical outcomes, and facilitate treatment adjustment if a patient is not improving as expected. MHIP also utilizes pay-for-performance mechanisms to support model fidelity and prioritize patient outcomes. Training and workforce efforts for this project focus on the whole team and all providers are trained on the fundamentals of CoCM.
Project Management
- Community Health Plan of Washington, Stephanie Shushan
- Public Health Seattle-King County, Anne Meegan
The Maternal Infant Dyad Implementation (MInD-I) Initiative
The Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) are providing an opportunity for primary care providers to receive training and technical assistance to implement a Collaborative Care (CoCM) program or spread their existing CoCM services to enhance care for women with perinatal depression and other behavioral health disorders through the Maternal Infant Dyad – Implementation (MInD-I) Initiative, pronounced ‘mind eye’.
Participating care teams receive 15 months of technical assistance and training support from the AIMS Center, including assistance building patient screening and outcome reports for continuous quality improvement. Training will focus on helping primary care clinics to implement or enhance their CoCM programs and build sustainable staffing strategies. Training and technical assistance is not limited to perinatal populations. The AIMS Center staff and faculty are available to assist providers to build a robust CoCM program that can capably serve all patient populations. Care teams also receive free access to the AIMS Caseload Tracker over the course of their participation in MInD-I, with the option of continuing to use the registry afterwards by paying an annual hosting fee.