Resources & Services: Learning Community
For Primary Care-Behavioral Health Learning Community Participants
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For help with technical issues, please email the National Council's IT Manager, Bob Beckwith, or call 301.984.6200, ext 233.
About the Learning Community
In September 2007, the National Council launched a year-long Primary Care-Behavioral Health Learning Community designed to accelerate the adoption of best practices in coordinating behavioral and primary healthcare. This National Council Learning Community is designed to bring together groups of like-minded organizations or people with a durable and ongoing commitment to cooperation and information sharing to achieve common goals.
Key components of the National Council Learning Community are
- Structured ongoing communication that facilitates information sharing and creative problem solving
- Shared leadership, resources, and success
- Measurable outcomes that consumers, clinicians, and administrators see as directly benefiting them
Organizations participating in the Primary Care-Beahvioral Health Learning Community have access to
- A dedicated listserve/discussion board and shared online resources
- Conference calls every other month
- Two hours of consultant time on the issues of their choice
- Free registration for the Learning Community Preconference at the 38th National Council Conference in Boston, May 2008.
Kathy Reynolds, CEO of Washtenaw Community Mental Health Organization in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and her team as well as other leaders in primary care coordination, including Barbara Mauer of MCPP Consulting and faculty from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan will provide ongoing technical assistance to this Learning Community.
The Primary Care-Behavioral Health Learning Community promotes learning in the following areas:
Administrative/Operations
- Templates for MOUs, agreements, job descriptions, responsibilities, community presentations
- IT barriers (firewalls) and privacy concerns
- Common methods for analyzing data and measures
Financing
- State variations in funding rules, creative funding sources
- Start-up costs
- CPT codes and reimbursement
- Demonstrate cost efficiency, return-on-investment
Governance
- Input on political issues
- Liability (professional roles, clinical responsibility)
Clinical
- Cultural differences and readiness to change (providers, organizations)
- Lack of protocols and clarity in delineation of roles, balancing workflow
- Lack of common integrated care model
- Involvement of EHRs
- Sustaining provider use of integrated care strategies
Participation in the National Council Learning Community yields multiple benefits
- Provides conduit for peer consultation/mentoring to share experience and expertise
- Allows access to experts and opinion leaders
- Yields state-of-the-art information
- Fosters translation of evidence-based and promising practices
- Promotes efficient resource use with time and cost savings
- Supports informed decision making
- Helps to build the business case
- Supports data warehousing for benchmarking
- Shares the latest research and grant opportunities
- Provides data analysis consultation
