February 2018

Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee: Beginning efforts to organize the federal interdepartmental implementation process for the ISMICC Recommendations.

Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute:   Dr. Minkoff and Dr. Cline contributed to the policy recommendations submitted by MMHPI to the state legislature. Continued work on finalizing recommendations for developing a model for an ideal substance use disorder system for Harris County. In addition, Dr. Minkoff, as a member of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP) has begun a process to link AAAP leadership to MMHPI and Texas addiction psychiatry leaders, in order to create capacity for bringing AAAPs newly funded 12.5 million dollar federal STR-TA grant for medication-assisted treatment expansion to Texas.

Follow MMHPI at www.texastateofmind.org

CALM:   Continued telephone consultation to initiate change processes at all levels of the organization, including initiation of quality improvement teams to improve access, supervision, and overall capacity for service delivery.

Ballad: On-site visits on February 5 (for official project launch), and February 12-13, during which ZiaPartners and TriWest conducted interviews with Ballad services throughout the North East Tennesee and South West Virginia regions, as well as meeting with important community providers (particularly Frontier Health, the major Mental Health center in Tennesee and part of Virginia), state leaders in Virginia and Tennesee, and other community stakeholders.

Vermont Co-operative for Practice Improvement and Innovation (VCPI): On February 23, Dr. Minkoff consulted to a half-day meeting of all the co-occurring project teams, to engage the participants in both the final evaluation of the project’s success, as well as in helping to design a continuing co-occurring competency learning community to be supported by state mental health and substance abuse leadership as well as by VCPI.

American Association of Community Psychiatrists: Dr. Minkoff attended the AACP Winter Board meeting in Nashville, TN Feb 9-11. As Chair of the Products and Services Plank, Dr. Minkoff helped to produce a formal position statement developed by the AACP recommending a comprehensive review of the current administrative treatment planning requirements for community mental health service delivery.

SAMHSA: As a result of the above, Dr. Minkoff was invited, along with other AACP members and other stakeholders, to a meeting convened by SAMHSA on February 28 to gather information about the current challenges of treatment planning requirements to determine how SAMHSA could implement such a review that would improve both service quality and customer and staff experience in public behavioral health services.

Common Ground: Continued consultation to assist in the development of improved capacity for Common Ground to deliver the highest possible quality comprehensive crisis service array in Oakland County, Michigan

For more information about common ground click here.

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