New Tool Addresses Behavioral Health During Pandemic
Resource Dives Deep on Treatment, Reimbursement, Clinician Well-being
February 5, 2021, 7:33 am News Staff — Family physicians and other primary care clinicians who have been seeing more cases of depression, anxiety and ADHD in their practices during the COVID-19 pandemic are getting a robust new resource to help them treat patients, ensure they’re reimbursed properly and bolster their own well-being.
The free resource, “Addressing Behavioral Health Issues During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comprehensive Educational Program,” has been developed for physicians and clinical care teams by the AAFP through a grant from Molina Healthcare. It will launch in March with three videos.
“The AAFP is excited to collaborate with Molina Healthcare to extend our educational offerings beyond family medicine to all primary care clinicians who provide mental and behavioral health care to their patients,” AAFP CEO/EVP Shawn Martin said in a news release. “Collaborations such as this allow us to broaden and strengthen primary care in the communities we serve.”
The resource was developed under the guidance of Santina Wheat, M.D., M.P.H., A.A.H.I.V.S., a faculty member at Northwestern McGaw Family Medicine Residency at Humboldt Park in Chicago, and CME program chair who worked with AAFP staff to oversee various activities and educational components.
The educational series will unfold over six months with a variety of tools — interactive streaming sessions, a Practice Hack tool, a livestream half-day conference, a community of practice and other activities — together designed to help FPs take a deep dive on how behavioral health during the pandemic impacts patients, coding and billing, and their own wellness, as well as that of their teams.
The first activities will be three live, one-hour streaming sessions, all beginning at 7 p.m. CT:
- March 1: Managing Anxiety and Depression in Your Practice, presented by Lauren Oshman, M.D., M.P.H., and Lindsay Fazio, Ph.D.
- March 8: Managing ADHD in Your Practice, presented by Ravi Grivois-Shah, M.D.
- March 15: Behavioral Health Practice Transformation and Reimbursement in the Era of COVID-19, presented by Manisha Sharma, M.D.
Recordings will be available the day following each session, and participants can watch them in any order.
Other Resources
The new educational series is one of several CME products on behavioral and mental health produced by the Academy. In addition, several articles on the topic are available in an FPM Topic Collection.
The AAFP is also a member of the recently formed Behavioral Health Integration Collaborative, a group of eight physician organizations working together to incorporate behavioral and mental health into overall health care and increase patient access to behavioral health services in the primary care setting.