Erika Rootvik, ARNP is a board certified PMHNP who works in community mental health in Walla Walla, WA. She performs psychiatric evaluations and medication management for patients across the lifespan, working with outpatient treatment teams that include a registered nurse and a therapist or case manager. She is also an active participant in the clinical leadership team at her community mental health center.
Ms. Rootvik has been interested in Collaborative Care/Integrated Care since working with at-risk youth at a school-based health center and realizing how many people “fall through the cracks” in our current healthcare system, struggling to receive adequate services for both mental and physical ailments. She hopes that through this program she can learn how to better collaborate with medical providers in her community to ensure easy access to appropriate services and improved continuity of care for individuals in her community.
Ms. Rootvik is pleased that the state has placed great emphasis on providing equal access to mental healthcare services on a payment-based level. Also, the organization she works for is a mid-adopter for Washington’s Integrated Managed Care, having just transitioned in January 2019. Despite these initiatives, Ms. Rootvik recognizes that communication between mental health care providers and primary care providers needs to be improved. She is hoping to develop a quality improvement program that aids in her organization’s collaboration with primary care providers.
Seeing that the need for mental health services is ever-expanding and the shortage of psychiatric providers does not appear to have an end in sight, Ms. Rootvik hopes that over the next few years this issue can be improved via closer collaboration with primary care providers. She would like to see lower acuity psychiatric patients more easily transferred to medication management under their primary care providers so that mental health providers can continue to meet the demands of more severe cases that require a higher level of care.