Health Center Featured in AHRQ Guidebook as Model for Integrated Care
Penobscot Community Health Care (PCHC) is pleased to announce that its Summer Street Health Center practice was featured in A Guidebook of Professional Practices for Behavioral Health and Primary Care Integration, recently released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an arm of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Summer Street Health Center was chosen for its unique model of delivering integrated health care and was one of eight primary care organizations from around the country that were featured in the study of best practices for the integrated, collaborative delivery of mental and physical health services.
Representatives from the University of Colorado Denver and Oregon Health and Sciences University visited Summer Street Health Center in late 2013 to observe PCHC’s model of care as part of a project funded by AHRQ, and jointly supported through a partnership with the CalMHSA Integrated Behavioral Health Project and the Maine Health Access Foundation. The methods used at Summer Street Health Center, along with those from the other participating practices, were used to create a guidebook of professional practices necessary to deliver integrated care. The guidebook is now available at http://integrationacademy.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/AHRQ_AcademyGuidebook.pdf.
Summer Street Health Center has a dedicated team of medical and mental health providers and staff, led by Trip Gardner, MD, Medical Director/Chief Psychiatric Officer, and Lisa Buck, MD, who continuously work to provide quality, compassionate, patient-centered care. Lisa Buck, MD, states, “I am proud and honored that our team has received this national recognition.” Trip Gardner, MD, states, “We are very pleased to receive this national recognition but more pleased with the recognition we receive from the people we are proud to serve. Our focus is on serving individuals, in whole, as they are. By keeping this whole person at the center of what we do, it is only natural and normal to make health care as integrated as the people we are fortunate enough to assist. “
Summer Street Health Center opened in 2007 and was developed to provide integrated medical and psychiatric care, day and respite programs for homeless and peri-homeless individuals in the Bangor area. The Summer Street Health Center relocated to 181 Corporate Drive, Bangor, in March and is now part of Hope House Health and Living Center, PCHC’s emergency homeless shelter, medical center, and transitional housing program. For more information about integrated health services at Hope House Health and Living Center, please call 992-2636.