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Spring Harbor
Hospital News |
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New organization aims to improve
mental healthcare access, quality, and
cost
February
27, 2009 - A new organization has been formed to better
coordinate fragmented mental health services and speed treatment and
recovery for residents of 11 Maine counties. Called Maine
Mental Health Partners, the nonprofit will build a network of
treatment providers that will coordinate their clinical approaches
and treatment pathways to better serve those in need of mental
healthcare in the MaineHealth service areas
of Androscoggin, Cumberland, Franklin, Kennebec, Knox, Lincoln,
Oxford, Sagadahoc, Somerset, Waldo, and York Counties.
According to Maine Mental Health
Partners' Chairman Richard Carriuolo, consumers can expect the
outcomes of building this network to include "improved access to
treatment, safer and better coordinated care across provider
organizations, and reduced time spent in intensive care settings,
such as emergency rooms and hospital units." In addition, he
says, Maine Mental Health Partners will offer partner
agencies shared administrative services, such as accounting,
billing, and information technology, as well as group purchasing
programs for insurance coverage, energy, and supplies. "We
expect this approach will represent substantial savings for many
agencies," Carriuolo remarks, "and allow them to focus on delivering
their high-quality clinical services."
Maine Mental Health Partners' Vice
President of Medical Affairs Girard Robinson, MD, says the idea
behind the new organization is "enabling Maine people to access the
right type of mental health treatment at the right time, in the
right place, and at the right cost." He says coordinating
individual agencies within a coherent network of providers will
increase satisfaction for both consumers and caregivers because
treatment plans and electronic medical records will ultimately be
consistent at every point within the network. "The result will
be a higher-quality, safer system of care that saves consumers time
and substantially reduces redundancy," Dr. Robinson says.
Dennis King, president of Maine Mental
Health Partners and CEO of the Spring Harbor
Hospital psychiatric facility in Westbrook, says such a
network also offers significant savings potential for individuals
and payers, particularly given the current utilization of emergency
rooms and hospital units by those in psychiatric crisis. "If
folks could receive appropriate services sooner, whether in the home
or in some other community setting," he says, "they might be able to
avoid the mental health crises that often lead to
hospitalization."
Maine Mental Health Partners'
Trustee Anne Pringle, former mayor of Portland and a longtime mental
health advocate, agrees. "If there were a coordinated system
of providers working together to match each individual's need to an
easily accessible and appropriate level of clinical service," she
says, "it would significantly reduce waits in emergency rooms by
people in crisis, as well as unnecessarily long hospital stays."
Dr. Robinson, who is also the Chief of
Psychiatry at Maine Medical
Center, concurs. He says that over the past four months, the
average length of stay for Maine Medical Center emergency room
patients awaiting psychiatric hospitalization was more than 6 hours.
Over that same period, the average length of stay at Spring Harbor
Hospital was between 8 and 10 days. "Though these lengths of stay
are within national averages," Dr. Robinson notes, "needing to wait
this long for entry into the next appropriate level of care is
frustrating for the individuals and families involved. We believe
the Maine Mental Health Partners' network approach will help."
Established in November 2008, Maine
Mental Health Partners counts among
its current members the 100-bed Spring Harbor
Hospital and Spring Harbor Community Services, which
delivers nonprofit outpatient mental health programs in Greater
Portland and psychiatric management and administrative services
to Maine Medical
Center, Southern Maine
Medical Center in Biddeford, and PenBay
Medical Center in Rockland,
among others. It is also home to the state's only residency
training program in General
Psychiatry and the only Child
Fellowship program north of Boston for physicians training
to be child and adolescent psychiatrists. Maine Mental Health
Partners additionally oversees groundbreaking national research
funded by The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation to prevent schizophrenia and other serious and
debilitating mental illnesses.
Integrated
Behavioral Healthcare, a private psychiatry practice in Scarborough, is a
recent addition to the Maine Mental Health Partners
network. Chief Executive and Medical Officer Gordon H. Clark, Jr.,
MD, MDiv, DFAPA, CPE, FACPE, says membership made sense for him.
"Over 12 years, I had grown the practice to a point where it was
successful, had a good reputation, and excellent, quality
clinicians," Dr. Clark says. "I sought out a partner to provide the
support in finance, human resources, marketing, and strategic
planning that would take the practice to the next level. I was also
looking for economies of scale, leverage in negotiating payer fee
schedules, and help managing the risk of growing the business on my
own. From my perspective, membership in this larger organization has
been fabulous."
Carriuolo says Maine Mental Health
Partners was the brainchild of the board and senior staff of
Spring Harbor Hospital and Maine Medical Center's Department of
Psychiatry, which have had an integrated administrative and clinical
management structure for the past 10 years.
"The trustees, several of whom are family
members of a person with mental illness, acknowledged that while
Spring Harbor and Maine Medical Center have an outstanding nucleus
of psychiatric treatment, training, and research programs, there are
still gaps in the delivery system that prevent consumers from
receiving needed care in a timely, coordinated manner," Carriuolo
explains. "After more than a year of planning, all agreed that
partnering with other providers, both locally and regionally, was
the best, most appropriate way to help fill those gaps."
Among the service gaps identified by the
trustees and staff were case management, crisis stabilization, and
residential treatment. "These are priority gaps to fill in our
service continuum because they are helpful in averting or shortening
hospital and emergency room stays," says Dr. Robinson. "Our current
member organizations have little, if any, expertise in delivering
these services, so we will reach out to agencies that do."
According to Carriuolo, there has been a fair
level of interest expressed by agencies wanting to learn more about
the Maine Mental Health Partners
model. "We have had several
meetings with providers already," he says, "and we anticipate
discussing the possibilities of partnership with other organizations
in the coming months."
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Maine Mental Health Partners
is located at 78 Atlantic Place in South
Portland. For more information, please call
207-842-7700.
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