Announcement: Katie Doyle, MSN, RN, Featured in Healthcare Innovation on Scaling Behavioral Health in Primary Care
Northwestern Medicine leader shares how collaboration and a commitment to primary care are transforming behavioral health access for thousands of patients.
Katie Doyle, MSN, RN, vice president of Operations at Northwestern Medicine, was recently featured in Healthcare Innovation for her leadership in scaling the collaborative care model across the primary care network.
In the article, Doyle discusses the multi-year journey at Northwestern Medicine to integrate behavioral health into primary care, growing the Collaborative Behavioral Health Program (CBHP) from small pockets across the system to all 70 Primary Care clinics and 500 physicians. This scaling has been made possible through a collaboration with West Health and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, who have provided strategic, operational and clinical expertise to help accelerate the program's expansion across the organization.
Doyle shares how the work began with depression screening nearly a decade ago and evolved into a comprehensive program that connects primary care physicians with psychiatrists and licensed clinical social workers to deliver more frequent, coordinated care for patients with anxiety and depression. She also speaks to the challenges that remain, including building reimbursement models that recognize the significant behind-the-scenes work primary care teams take on, and the long-term promise of this approach for improving chronic disease outcomes and total cost of care under value-based arrangements.