CIPC Blog

"What is the greatest impact you have as a behavioral health clinician (BHC) on the primary care team?”

Part 2 of 2

(Read Part 1) 

This is the 2nd and final part of a 2 part blog post series on the training the CIPC has provided to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (Mass League). In this blog post, Leslie Salas Karnes, Manager of Public Health Initiatives at Mass League shared her thoughts on the course.

Part 1 of 2 

(Read Part 2) 

Over the last 1.5 years, Mass League has partnered with the UMass Chan Center for Integrated Primary Care (CIPC) to provide three different training sessions to health center teams. These trainings have been received well and have helped to increase the skills and knowledge of CHC providers.

Adult Primary Care Physician Visits Increasingly Address Mental Health Concerns

The CIPC team would like to recommend an excellent professional development opportunity for BHCs through Creach Consulting Group.

Legislation for “Primary Care for You” (PC4You) has been introduced into the Massachusetts Senate! 

The Curbsiders Addiction Medicine Podcast just wrapped up a stellar series on Addiction Medicine that has enormous applicability for any primary care clinician. This series is packed with evidence-based education on caring for patients with substance disorders.

First let me say that the PHQ-9 is a fairly good tool for screening patients and identifying those who have an unmet behavioral health need.  While I think computer adaptive testing is a better approach and the way of the future, there are still plenty of settings where a paper and pencil PHQ-9 is the best we can do.

A Behavioral Health staff huddle at the Barre Family Health Center

Does more integration mean better healthcare? What if you work in a rural practice or in a busy practice in the center of a major city? Dr. Daniel Mullin and colleagues developed the Practice Integration Profile (PIP) to create a measure of integrated primary care that compares practices and monitors integration in a practice over time. Read the post by clicking on the title.

Dr. Ethan Eisdorfer, a behavioral health provider at our Barre Family Health Center, analyzes a recent JAMA article about using non-specialist care providers to deliver brief mental health interventions to pregnant and post-partum women.

The most common types of non-specialists in these studies were midwives and nurses, but also included peers or community members, health visitors, and even family physicians. In many of the studies included in the analysis, professional mental health specialists served in a training or supervisory role without providing any direct care.

What would task-shifting like this throughout primary care practices look like?  How might it change the efficiency and efficacy of current healthcare? Click on the title above to learn more.