The service changes your life, as one beneficiary provider says
Dr. Cecile Fraley, CEO of Pediatric Partners of the Southwest, at Horse Gulch Health Campus practices. The practice will receive $366,000 over the next three years to fund behavioral health services. (Shaun Stanley File/Durango Herald)
Two Durango-based pediatric health care providers, Pediatric Partners of the Southwest and 4 Corners Children’s Clinic, have received grants from the Department of State Health Care Policy and Financing to strengthen their integrated behavioral health care services .
Pediatric partners will receive $366,000 over the three-year grant period, and 4 Corners Clinic, a smaller practice, will receive $115,000. The money comes from $29 million in state American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated to the cause by the Legislature.
Behavioral health care can include a wide range of services, practitioners say. This could include a visit to a child psychiatrist or play therapy, or even counseling for a new parent who screens positive for postpartum depression. The concept centers on the availability of behavioral health care when needed without having to immediately make an outside referral.
Having a behavioral health specialist in the office (means we can) do quick check-ins, can address immediate needs, shorter-term needs and provide that access to mental health care that people wouldn’t otherwise seek, has said Jessica Rensner. , who runs 4CCC.
According to the grant fact sheet, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality defines integrated care, in part, as the care a patient receives through a team of primary care clinicians and behavioral health provider, working collaboratively with patients and their families, using a systematic, cost-effective approach to providing patient-centered care to a defined population.
Rensner will use the funding to hire a part-time behavioral health provider and a child and adolescent psychiatrist to consult.
Mental and behavioral health needs have increased over the past 15 years, then intensified post-COVID, said Dr. Cécile Fraley, executive director of PPSW.
His practice, which launched its behavioral health program 14 years ago, will use the grant to offset the cost of adding a fourth behavioral health provider and provide an annual grant of $4,000 per staff member to additional training. Fraley said funding for training far exceeds what we can offer.
Fraley has been involved in the evolving medical care landscape regionally and nationally for many years. She said the grant would facilitate the growth of a better-equipped workforce.
Whether people stay with us for years as a behavioral health team or they go out into the community and do other counseling or other things in the community, they will benefit from these additional pediatric trainings, a she declared.
Although rarely covered by insurance, Fraley says integrating primary care with other types of services improves treatment across the board.
Behavioral health changes your life as a provider, she said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
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