APA to Offer Basic and Advanced Training in Collaborative Care Model

Free in-person training in the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) will be offered again at this year’s Annual Meeting.

The session “Applying the Integrated Care Approach: Collaborative Care Skills for the Consulting Psychiatrist” will be held on three days from 8 a.m. to noon: Saturday, May 18, Sunday, May 19, and Monday, May 20. Seats in each session are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

There will also be an advanced session, scheduled for Tuesday, May 21, from 8 a.m. to noon. The advanced session is also free and open to all meeting attendees.

All training workshops are part of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI), supported by 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) 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.

Presenters in the standard workshop will make the case for integrated behavioral health services in primary care, including the evidence for its effectiveness; discuss principles of integrated behavioral health care; describe the roles for a primary care consulting psychiatrist on an integrated care team; and apply a primary care–oriented approach to psychiatric consultation for common behavioral health presentations.

Co-coordinators of the training are Anna Ratzliff, M.D., M.P.H., and John Kern, M.D., who are on the staff of the AIMS Center.

Since APA has been offering the training, many psychiatrists trained in the model have become involved in successful implementations of CoCM, and many more are preparing to do so. So far, 23 SAN learning collaboratives—an advanced online training activity—have been completed.

For psychiatrists already versed in the fundamentals of collaborative care, the advanced training session will delve into a number of areas crucial to the successful implementation of CoCM programs. They include the following:

• Nuts-and-bolts details about how successful implementations have overcome common obstacles.

• An up-to-date report on collaborative care model billing codes and procedures.

• A thorough introduction to the APA/AIMS Center Financial Modeling Tool, which has been assisting organizations with making credible financial plans for collaborative care implementation.

• A review of the use of data gleaned from a collaborative care registry and a presentation on how to evaluate these data meaningfully for purposes of program improvement.

• A review of techniques and strategies for efficiently training members of the collaborative care team, including care managers and primary care providers.

“Because we are mindful of the importance to psychiatrists of the development of a community of collaborative care practitioners, there will be opportunities for participants to engage with panel members and reflect on the diverse, real-life experiences of building and implementing a collaborative care program,” Kern said. ■