Montgomery County Psychiatric Consultation Pilot

Montgomery County Behavioral Health and Crisis Services (BHCS), in partnership with the Primary Care Coalition (PCC), is promoting greater integration of primary care and behavioral health services in the safety net primary care clinics.  To accomplish this, BHCS will pair a county psychiatrist with two safety-net clinics.  The psychiatrists will be available 2 - 4 hours a week to work with clinic providers and staff to enhance the level of behavioral health services provided to clinic patients.

 

While part of this process entails discussion between the primary care physicians and psychiatrists to identify the best approaches, we envision a model that could include the following elements: psychiatric consultation on specific patients, group trainings, and/or one-on-one skills building sessions with primary care provider.

 

The psychiatrists would not provide direct services to patients in the clinics at this time.  Clinics participating in the pilot will have increased access for their patients to county evaluation and treatment services for patients whose behavioral health problem exceeds the capacity of a primary care setting.  The second element of the pilot is an effort to ensure that long-term, psychiatrically stable clients in the BHCS clinics with identified medical needs can be served in the Montgomery Cares clinics as needed.

 

MCC Medical Clinic, which is a part of this pilot project, can offer these services to Montgomery eligible patients only. Patients who are not Montgomery Care eligible are referred to Dr. Vani Rao, a volunteer psychiatrist at the Clinic. Dr. Rao sees these patients on first come first serve basis. Please contact us about her availability.

 

Montgomery County eligible residence can request an appointment for a psychiatric consultation by calling 301-384-2166 Ext. 1001.