Contents tagged with behavioral health
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March 2022 Member of the Month
Member of the Month: Zach Sartor, MD
Mental health advocate passionate about training family medicine’s next generation
By Samantha White
posted 03.02.22
Zach Sartor, MD, is the Curriculum … more
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TAFP announces innovators competition prize winners
Academy launches Behavioral Health Integration Toolkit
The judges’ tallies are in and we have three winners in TAFP’s first-ever Behavioral Health Integration Innovators Competition. In May, the Academy put out a call to primary care practices asking them to submit their unique models of behavioral health integration for the chance to win $10,000. Entries were judged by the TAFP Behavioral Health Task Force, which was appointed after the Academy identified the need for greater integration of behavioral health services in primary care as a top priority in its strategic plan.
The judges selected winners in each of three care settings: academic health centers, integrated health systems, and solo and small group practices. The winners are the Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program of Sugar Land in the academic setting category, the Heart of Texas Community Health Center of Waco in the integrated health systems category, and the Hope Clinic of McKinney in the small group and solo practice category.
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Our next moonshot – Apollo 13 and the state of behavioral health in Texas
By Janet Hurley, MD
If you have never seen the movie “Apollo 13,” I highly recommend it. It tells the story of a fateful NASA mission to the moon. In route to the moon, there was an explosion and the astronauts had to use the lunar lander module as a lifeboat. The movie tells the story of innovation, teamwork, and unbridled commitment toward the goal of bringing the astronauts home. The mission was called “a successful failure” because they failed to go to the moon, but they succeeded in bringing the astronauts home alive against terrible odds.
In my role as medical director of population health for my local health system, I have undertaken the task of developing a behavioral health program with the goal of having a behavioral health counselor embedded in each of our primary care clinics and psychiatrist consultants available to review behavioral health care plans, discuss cases with primary care physicians, and receive direct referrals. This is one good way to provide support to primary care while protecting a psychiatrist’s time to ensure that referrals are done for only the most difficult mental health patients. This has been my initial plan for mental health expansion in my organization.
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