New Tool Addresses Behavioral Health During Pandemic

doi:10.1370/afm.2703

Family physicians and other primary care clinicians who have been seeing more cases of depression, anxiety, and ADHD during the COVID-19 pandemic have 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 by the AAFP through a grant from Molina Healthcare. It launched at https://www.aafp.org/behavioralhealth in March 2021 with 3 videos and a Practice Hack tool. A session on putting evidence into practice was added in April 2021.

“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 about the new resource. “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, MD, MPH, AAHIVS, 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 is unfolding over 6 months with a variety of tools—interactive streaming sessions, a community of practice and other activities—together designed to help family physicians 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 interactive streaming sessions available now include:

Managing Anxiety and Depression in Your Practice, presented by Lauren Oshman, MD, MPH, and Lindsay Fazio, PhD
Managing ADHD in Your Practice, presented by Ravi Grivois-Shah, MD
Behavioral Health Practice Transformation and Reimbursement in the Era of COVID-19, presented by Manisha Sharma, MD
Behavioral Health: Putting Evidence into Practice, presented by Lauren Oshman MD, MPH; Lindsay Fazio, PhD; Ravi Grivois-Shah, MD; Manisha Sharma, MD; and Santina Wheat, MD, MPH, AAHIVS

The new educational series is one of several CME products on behavioral and mental health produced by the Academy. The AAFP is also a member of the recently formed Behavioral Health Integration Collaborative, a group of 8 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.