Clinical focus on new models of care
Clinically, MBB is re-shaping multidisciplinary teams to bring new models of care to more patients, starting with traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and mental health.
Mental health is a particularly challenging area. The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that one of every seven children aged 2-8 years, and one in five youths aged 9-17 years, experience a behavioral or mental condition. However, interventions often can be delayed by a decade or more with only 15 to 25 percent of children receiving the care they need.
MBB is addressing this crisis in our community by developing an early intervention model that places psychologists in primary care clinics to address emotional and physical health needs as they emerge, in one seamless system.
“This integration will make behavior services available to substantially more children in a trusted setting—their primary care home. This reduces barriers of stigma and the inconvenience of extra visits that can occur in a subspecialty system of care,” Stark says.
Likewise, we are building alternative management models to help children and adolescents in mental health crisis with the goals of preventing emergency room visits and reducing unnecessary hospitalizations.
Similar integrated care models are being developed for other clinical conditions within MBB.
A long-term effort
With so much to be done, it will take several years for the MBB initiative to bear its most important fruits.
“Ultimately, we don’t want to just improve treatment of disease. We want to get to health and wellness. The only way to get there is to bring all these disciplines back together again,” Glauser says. “And because of our strong resources, because of our culture of collaboration, we really believe we can do this here.”
—By Tim Bonfield