Overview

This session is the second in the webinar series that focuses on the critical issue of integration of primary care and behavioral health. Building on the first session that described a national, multi-state clinical trial, this session describes a regional strategy, that of the Rhode Island Care Transformation Collaborative. Grounded in the patient-centered medical home model, this presentation describes the strategies, processes and outcomes to date, as the smallest state in the nation boldly undertakes transformational change.

Learning Objectives

At the completion of the program, participants will be able to:

• List the goals of the Care Transformations Collaborative of Rhode Island
• Describe how the patient centered medical home can improve care
• Discuss the integration of behavioral health in primary care in Rhode Island

Speakers

Nelly Burdette, PsyD

Dr. Nelly Burdette received her Doctorate degree in health psychology from Spalding University in Louisville, KY. Her internship was completed at Cherokee Health Systems in Knoxville, TN with a focus on delivery of behavioral health services within a primary care safety net population. Her two-year post- doctorate was completed at University of Massachusetts Medical School in Primary Care Psychology. She has created integrated care programs at federally-qualified health centers, community mental health centers, specialty mental health settings and the Veteran’s Administration. From positions in senior leadership to providing clinical services embedded within medical practices, she has provided the training and supervision to a wide range of health providers in both basic and intermediate principles of integrated behavioral health. She has served as a consultant to Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care through a Mental Health Initiative. In her current roles, Dr. Burdette is the Director of Integrated Behavioral Health at Providence Community Health Centers (PCHC), the largest federally-qualified health center in Rhode Island. For the past 3 years, she has served in both a leadership and clinical role at PCHC and serves in a lead integrated behavioral health consultant role to Care Transformations Collaborative (CTC-RI), a primary care reform initiative aimed to transform how medical and behavioral health within primary care is delivered in the State of Rhode Island.

Debra Hurwitz, MBA, BSN, RN

As Executive Director for CTC-RI, Debra Hurwitz provides program administration, contract development and strategic planning for the Initiative, working closely with project leaders and key stakeholders to improve the Patient Centered Medical Home Model within the existing practices and to develop plans to expand and spread the model throughout Rhode Island. She works closely with Dr. Yeracaris in supporting the practices and leads the nurse care manager best practice learning collaborative.

Ms. Hurwitz is a graduate of the UMass Dartmouth School of Nursing and University of Rhode Island MBA program. Her career includes work for the Hospital Association of RI as a Senior Management Systems Engineer and Nurse Consultant providing consultation on nurse staffing and quality improvement to member hospitals throughout New England. She later worked in hospital administration and served as the Executive Director/CEO of a non-profit disability management company which provided care management services for Marlborough Hospital and other self-insured employers in the area.

As the Director of State Health Policy Analysis for the UMass Center for Health Policy and Research, she led an 11- person team that provided policy analyses, program evaluations and strategic planning for Medicaid and Department of Mental Health (DMH) in Massachusetts. While at the Center, she served as a Senior Director of several large, multi-year CMS grants including the Medicaid Infrastructure Grant and the Real Choices System Change grant. In addition, she served as the principal Investigator for the Mental Health Systems Transformation Grant working with DMH and a large and diverse group of stakeholders to promote recovery-oriented mental health programs and services in Massachusetts. More recently, Ms. Hurwitz led a large and complex stakeholder group in the development of a strategic plan to promote competitive employment for people with disabilities.

Currently, Ms. Hurwitz is a senior consultant with the UMass Medical School, Office of Program Development and a faculty member of the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Graduate School of Nursing.

debra.hurwitz@umassmed.edu