Annual Meeting Offers Opportunity To Practice Integrated Care

So enough talking about integrated, collaborative care—it’s time to start doing it.

That’s the goal in a unique new “laboratory” experience at the Annual Meeting in which psychiatrists will be able to simulate working in a collaborative care team to manage the care of a small population of patients. “Collaborative Care Lab: Experience the Newest Way to Practice” is one of the sessions in this year’s Integrated Care Track.

The lab will be led by Erik Vanderlip, M.D., M.P.H., Lori Raney, M.D., Anna Ratzliff, M.D., Ph.D., and Lydia Chwastiak, M.D., M.P.H. It is designed for those psychiatrists with little or no experience with collaborative care as well as advanced practitioners.

“There is a lot of talking about collaborative care models,” Vanderlip told Psychiatric News. “But it’s time for clinicians to start giving it a try. When you were learning about chemistry in high school, you had lectures, but then you went to a lab to practice what you were taught. The collaborative care lab is a near approximation of how psychiatrists work and function in a team with others to care for a population.”

The lab will highlight the essential elements of collaborative care through a time-intensive, problem-based simulation. Participants will be formed into small teams made up of a psychiatrist, primary care provider, and care manager in charge of managing cases over the length of the lab. The teams also will be provided with registry data on outcomes for their team. Afterward, there will be a debriefing exercise and time for reviewing the essential elements of the collaborative care model and their application in the simulation.

The session promises to be enlivening. “Members should come prepared to have fun,” Vanderlip told Psychiatric News. “It’s a totally different type of design format for the Annual Meeting—it’s not a workshop, it’s not a symposium, it’s not a lecture in which you listen to the presenter. It’s a laboratory activity in which participants will experience a new way to practice psychiatry. We have been doing a lot of talking about integrated care, but it’s a whole different thing to actually do it.” ■

“Collaborative Care Lab: Experience the Newest Way to Practice” will be held Wednesday, May 18, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Room B211/212, Building B, Level 2, Georgia World Congress Center.