The Center for Health Services Research’s Rural Outreach Program (RPOP) provides training and support to rural primary care practices for identifying and treating common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety so that patients can receive needed help and remain in the practice of their preferred primary care provider.
Services include:
- Training and consultation to support primary care staff in optimizing care for their patients with mental health needs
- Help implementing evidence-based screeners for common mental health conditions
- Providing direct care to patients with common mental health conditions
- Providing mental health resources for clinicians and their patients
A multidisciplinary team from the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute will provide support to the clinic in a tiered fashion. A member from the Rural Outreach Program team will provide regular interaction including telephone calls, emails, and site visits to help with logistics of incorporating screening into the practice as well as to support the skills acquired during the training program. When the primary care providers have patients with depression or anxiety who are not responding well to treatment, the team will be available to consult with personnel from the practice (this may be the primary care physician, a nurse practitioner, or other clinical personnel in the practice) on clinical strategies tailored to a given patient. For patients who do not respond to treatment despite a consultation with the team, a clinical team member will see the patient via televideo. This may be with the psychiatrist, psychologist, pharmacist, or social worker depending on the needs of the patient and the assessment of the primary care provider in that practice. The team clinician will make recommendations to the primary care providers about treatment of the patient. However, the goal of these supportive services is for the primary care provider to retain the patient in their practice.
For more information about this program, contact the Rural Outreach Program staff at (501) 526-8327 or RPOP@uams.edu.