Expand Your Practice Through Special Collaborative Care Sessions

Federally funded training sessions in the collaborative care model of integrated care will be available at APA’s Annual Meeting in San Diego.

The session “Applying the Integrated Care Approach: Collaborative Care Skills for the Consulting Psychiatrist” has been scheduled at four times: Saturday, May 20, through Tuesday, May 23, from 8 a.m. to noon. Seats in each session are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The training is part of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI), a $2.9 million, four-year federal grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. APA is one of just 39 organizations chosen to participate in TCPI. As one of the Support and Alignment Networks (SANs) awarded under the grant, APA is committed to training 3,500 psychiatrists in the principles and practice of collaborative care, a specific model of integrated care developed by the late Wayne Katon, M.D., Jürgen Unützer, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at the AIMS (Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions) Center at the University of Washington.

APA is providing both online and live training in the collaborative care model as part of the TCPI. The first live training was offered at last year’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta. “Over the past year, we trained over 1,000 psychiatrists in this exciting new way to deliver care through the collaborative care model,” said APA Director of Education Tristan Gorrindo, M.D. “We are looking forward to continuing that effort at the 2017 Annual Meeting.”

Psychiatrists who complete the training can continue by connecting, through a virtual learning collaborative, with primary care practices in their area that are looking for psychiatrists to practice in this model. Psychiatrists connect with primary care practices for a half-day to one day a week to diversify the ways in which they currently practice.

Importantly, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year approved reimbursement for the code “Psychiatric Collaborative Care Management Services.” This will support payments to psychiatrists for consultative services they provide to primary care physicians in the collaborative care model. The new code opens the door to greater adoption of the collaborative care model by removing a principal barrier—the lack of a structure for reimbursement of consulting physicians who participate in the model. Development of codes and payment for them have been a major APA priority.

Anna Ratzliff, M.D., of the University of Washington and the training coordinator at this year’s Annual Meeting, told Psychiatric News, “This course will prepare psychiatrists to take advantage of the new CMS Collaborative Care code by learning about the role of a psychiatric consultant to a primary care team. It offers the core content and skills necessary to adapt your psychiatric expertise to deliver mental health care in primary care settings using a team-based approach.”

John Kern, M.D., one of the instructors for the course, added, “A number of psychiatrists have followed up with the SAN learning collaboratives—an online learning experience that helps deepen their knowledge and gives them a great opportunity to become part of the dynamic community of collaborative care practitioners.” ■

Information about the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative can be accessed here.

For a complete list of sessions being offered at the meeting on integrated/collaborative care, click here.