Join in Discussion on Integrated Care

Join in the discussion group for psychiatrists working at the interface of primary care and mental and behavioral health at APA's 2011 annual meeting in Honolulu on Sunday, May 15. The session will be held from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the Ilima Room on the second floor of the Ala Moana Hotel.

This forum will allow for dialogue about both the work psychiatrists do with primary care colleagues in integrated settings and the primary care considerations facing psychiatrists in mental health practices. Psychiatrists working in these settings will have an opportunity to exchange ideas and network.

Leading the annual meeting discussion will be Jurgen Unutzer, M.D., the principal investigator for Project IMPACT and vice chair of psychiatry at the University of Washington, and Lori Raney, M.D., the medical director of Axis Health System in Durango, Colo. Project IMPACT, at <http://impact-uw.org>, is responsible for the model of care most frequently used in integrated settings.

The conversation is sure to be timely and useful in this era of health care reform. Psychiatric leadership is crucial to making health care reform successful and to attaining the long-sought goal of closing the mortality gap for persons with mental illness.

APA's Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing recently created an electronic forum for members interested in learning more about integrated care and how it relates to psychiatry. It now has about 160 members.

More information about the forum and the annual meeting discussion is available by contacting Karen Sanders at (703) 907-8590 or ksanders{at}psych.org.