Anne Koomen, MS, ARNP is a psychiatric nurse practitioner on the Olympic Peninsula, an area of Washington that struggles to maintain adequate access to specialty services. Her work in mental health services began in the early 2000’s, and throughout these years she has held a growing concern about the stark and oftentimes unbridgeable divides between systems of care. She became a psychiatric nurse practitioner after working for a non-profit organization serving children in Bangalore, India where she witnessed innumerable children unable to make the strides forward that they would like to because there were too many barriers for effective collaboration between service providers. It became apparent to her that in order to provide a higher quality of care she would need to transition into a role where she could offer a link between primary care and mental health services.

Ms. Koomen started her career as a nurse practitioner in 2012, and since then has worked in community mental health services in Port Angeles, WA. In this position she provided psychiatric evaluation and medication management for patients across the lifespan in tight collaboration with patients’ therapists, case managers, and primary care providers. Ms. Koomen is now entering into a role as a psychiatric consultant in the primary care clinics at Jefferson Healthcare in Port Townsend, WA. This organization is working hard to extend psychiatric access to this rural community with the use of the AIMS Model, and she is excited to be a part of this process.

Through participation in this program, Ms. Koomen hopes to gain more tools for easing collaboration between the various systems that intersect in patients’ lives. She is particularly looking forward to thinking about ways to expand the collaborative care model into both pediatric and perinatal care where there are strong needs for clear communication between systems and improved access to services. Regarding pediatric care, Ms. Koomen hopes that in 5 years we will be able to use the collaborative care model to coordinate in a more streamlined manner with special education services and teachers. She also hopes that we can continue to grow access for women who are planning pregnancy, currently pregnant, or in their first year after birth in order to improve the outcomes for their mental health and the mental health of their children.

Mariana Sant’Anna Neeway, DNP is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at the Kadlec Behavioral Health Clinic in Richland. Kadlec Medical Center (and its many clinics) is the largest health care provider in the Tri-Cities area. Dr. Neeway works in outpatient medication management for patients across the lifespan dealing with psychiatric and mental health disorders. She works in an underserved area with a diverse population, both ethnically and socioeconomically. She hopes that the Community-Based Integrated Care Fellowship helps her and her team better develop and utilize their integrated care practice. She is also interested in telepsychiatry as a possibility for some of their patient appointments. 

Jennifer Purses, DO, is board certified in general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. She has been providing direct psychiatric consultative coverage in the acute care setting at Mary Bridge Children’s (a regional tertiary care children’s hospital) since August 2013 and has served as the Medical Director of Consultation & Liaison Psychiatry there since April 2016. More recently, her role is evolving to better strengthen outpatient primary care settings through providing support to co-located psychiatric nurse practitioners and through exploring novel models of care delivery to better address challenges of access to mental health services for pediatric primary care populations.

Dr. Purses has become very interested in the Collaborative Care Model and how this model may be adapted for children, adolescents, and families. She hopes that participating in this fellowship program will provide the skills and knowledge to establish a concrete plan moving toward better integration in pediatric primary care settings in the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital & Health Network and across the Pacific Northwest. Learning what is needed to implement an integrated care model into our primary care settings is imperative to overcome barriers to care, particularly access. Educating and empowering primary care settings to care for basic mental health needs of children and families provides the opportunity to unburden specialty providers, allowing them to focus on higher acuity, more severe mental health needs, resulting in improved access to services for everyone.

Dr. Purses hopes that 5 years from now, Mary Bridge will have implemented a robust and successful Collaborative Care Model that allows families to receive care for basic mental health services in settings with which they are familiar and comfortable, thereby reducing barriers to care. She hopes that the roll-out of this novel model of care delivery will result in more children receiving the care they need, pediatricians feeling better equipped and increasingly competent at caring for the whole patient, and better integration of patient & family-centered care within primary (and perhaps even specialty) care

Debra Rice, ARNP, PMHNP is a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP), who currently provides outpatient psychiatric care at Catholic Charities in Richland and Yakima. This is a shared position involving a short commute and a diverse clientele. Debra has worked as a psychiatric provider for five years in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Prior to becoming a provider, she taught nursing and worked for twelve years at Eastern State Hospital as a psychiatric nurse. Her varied work background provided a rich landscape of psychiatric experiences that highlights the importance of collaboration in providing holistic care.

Ms. Rice believes that collaborative care is critical to the environment of psychiatric care, where many of the clients are disenfranchised and economically impoverished. These financial limitations affect the ability of psychiatric clients to access medical care; it also impacts their ability to effectively navigate complex communication contexts once they are engaged with the clinical setting. These factors make collaboration, and advocacy critical for preventative health care. Ms. Rice hopes to expand her ability to meet the many and varied needs of psychiatric clients through the collaborative/integrative care program.

Recently the premier Cardiac Center in the Yakima Valley, Astria Regional Medical Center, closed its doors. This closure has further impacted the lack of healthcare access in the Yakima Valley. Modalities like telemedicine are imperative to provide this area with the health care so important to meet the needs of the Valley. The Yakima Valley is also home to the Yakama Nation, a federally recognized tribe whose homeland covers 130,000 acres in southwestern Washington. The suicide rates among Native Americans is three times that of the national rate. As a provider in the Yakima Valley, Ms. Rice hopes her participation in this program will aid her in establishing new ways of expanding outreach to this rural community.

Ms. Rice is hoping that the collaborative/integrative care model becomes the standard of care within the next five years. She is confident that the use of this model will aid in providing holistic care to the Yakima Valley. 

Darcy Sander, ARNP began her nursing career in 1989 in Seattle, WA. She was employed in a community hospital childbirth center where she held positions in post-partum, labor and delivery, special nursery and post-discharge follow up care. Following a move to Eastern Washington she began working with WA state Medicaid population providing perinatal support services with the program Maternity Support Services. Ms. Sander entered a Master’s program in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing after seeing a real need for perinatal mental health services. Upon graduation from Washington State University with a Masters of Nursing-Adult Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, Ms. Sander became employed in a community mental health clinic in Eastern WA. She has been a psychiatric provider for crisis respite, PACT and outpatient services. She has enjoyed meeting mental health needs of both acute and chronic mental health conditions. Ms. Sander maintains a special interest in the perinatal population and completed a post-graduate certificate in infant mental health from the University of Washington in 2015. She has recently attended the Postpartum Support International Annual Conference in Portland and is participating in the perinatal ECHO program at the University of Washington. She plans to sit for certification in perinatal mental health created by Postpartum Support International.

There is a significant shortage of psychiatric providers in Washington and the nation. Ms. Sander is looking forward to participating in the Collaborative Care/Integrated Care fellowship to improve access to services for mental health for clients presenting to medical clinics, and for medical care from mental health clinics. Ms. Sander is particularly interested in increasing access for the perinatal client. She wants to gain expertise in consultative strategies to meet the needs of prenatal care providers ensuring evidence based psychiatric care for clients. Darcy’s hope is that participation in this fellowship will ultimately increase access to care, and ultimately increase awareness and treatment of perinatal disorders and infant mental health in Grant County and beyond.

A vision for Collaborative Care/Integrated Care 5 years from now would include regular communication between medical, psychiatric, and substance use disorders service providers while including clients in decisions and goals of care. Interagency agreements would be commonplace and fluid evolving to meet biopsychosocial changes of providers and clients. Care will include care provided across the lifespan and extending into child care centers, schools, and long term care facilities.

Claire Thurman-Moore, MSN, ARNP works as a PMHNP in Bellingham, WA. She is currently practicing at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center’s inpatient psychiatric unit. In the spring of 2020, she will be transitioning part-time to the integrated behavioral health program at PeaceHealth Medical Groups’ primary care clinic.

Like so many communities nationwide, Whatcom County does not have enough licensed psychiatric providers to meet the mental health needs of its community. Ms. Thurman-Moore has witnessed the impact of this shortage first hand. She frequently treats patients who have tried to seek timely psychiatric care in order to prevent hospitalization only to be turned away by psychiatrists or PMHNPs with full practices or months long waitlists. She also frequently refers psychiatrically complicated patients to their primary care providers for support after hospitalization, hoping that the PCP’s busy practices can adequately address these patients’ complex needs. 

PeaceHealth’s integrated behavioral health program attempts to fill this gap by directly supporting primary care clinicians as they provide timely, high-quality mental health care. Ms. Thurman-Moore has come to believe that this program and others like it are the best way to leverage scarce psychiatric resources in order to more efficiently and creatively care for individuals with mental illness in our communities. 

In participating in this fellowship, she hopes to solidify her skills as a psychiatric consultant as well as to identify and address specific needs within PeaceHealth’s existing integrated behavioral health program. In particular, she plans to work with her colleagues to develop a registry of patients with active mental illness to prevent folks from “falling through the cracks.”  She hopes that, as PeaceHealth’s integrated behavioral health program grows, it can serve as a model for other primary care clinics in the county and that, within five years, integrated behavioral health will be standard practice throughout the healthcare system. 

Angela Carter, ARNP, PMHNP-BC is currently completing her Doctor of Nursing at Vanderbilt University. She received her Master’s degree at the University of Washington School of Nursing, and her post-MSN at Maryville University. She is in her 2nd year of serving psychiatric patients ages 16 years and above at the Helping Hearts Advanced Psychiatry Clinic, PLLC with various mental health care needs. She was an Adjunct Professor at the Seattle University from 2013-2019. She has advanced skills in telepsychiatry practice and is in interested in incorporating the collaborative care model into current practice.

Julie Christiansen, ARNP is currently working as a psychiatric consultant in a primary care setting at CHAS Health, a community health organization based in Spokane. She splits her time between an urban clinic in the downtown corridor with a large homeless population in Spokane as well as a small rural community in Deer Park. Her daily panel is a mix of initial intakes, consultations with primary care providers and follow up appointments. One of the most satisfying aspects of the practice is the opportunity to work with complex, treatment resistant patients when they experience an improvement in function. The volume and complexity of patients keeps the day interesting.

Integrated care at CHAS Health has the potential to improve mental health outcomes in the primary care setting. CHAS Health’s Market Street clinic currently has a modified integrated care practice with a strong psychiatric consultant based there. One goal for Ms.Christiansen is becoming better equipped to implement a more integrated approach to psychiatric services at CHAS Health’s downtown and Deer Park clinics. She looks forward to learning skills related to providing psychiatric consultation to primary care providers who are resistant to change from “usual practice”.

Five years from now, she would like to see an established integrated care model at CHAS Health across all clinics, allowing increased access to psychiatry services in the primary care setting.

Tamra Johnson, ARNP, PMHNP-BC is a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner at Woman’s Health Care Center, at UW Medical Center – Roosevelt.  She provides mental healthcare services for individuals ages 13 and older and works collaboratively with the primary care providers, obstetrics and gynecology providers, specialty healthcare providers, and MSWs, to provide a “team-based” approach to wellness.  

Ms. Johnson is interested in collaborative and integrated healthcare because she is passionate about everyone having an opportunity to have access to psychiatric care and believes that collaborative and integrated healthcare is the pathway to achieve this. She appreciates being a part of the primary care, OB/GYN, and specialty care teams, and to be able to provide psychiatric care within the clinic where the patients already feel comfortable and are often well known to their care team.  Through this fellowship, she hopes to gain insight and a greater understanding of how collaborative care can give more patients access to psychiatric care. 

Ms. Johnson chose to participate in this fellowship to increase her knowledge and skill base in providing the collaborative healthcare that she plans to continue to develop and share within the clinic community and eventually, with the community-at-large.  

In 5 years, she hopes to see collaborative care continue to grow in practice and to be more widely accepted and utilized as the standard of care so that everyone that needs psychiatric care can access it. 

Justin Bayley, DNP, ARNP is a psychiatric nurse practitioner working in Spokane.  His work as a medical nurse started in 2011.  His work in mental health began in 2014 as a float pool nurse who frequented the psychiatric units in Sacred Heart hospital.  Throughout this experience he saw the necessity of acute care but was frequently frustrated by a lack of outpatient psychiatry services.  After much reflection he decided to go back to school to be part of care that contributed to people staying out of the hospital.

Dr. Bayley started his career as a nurse practitioner in 2021 and currently works as a PHMNP at Excelsior Family Medicine.  Excelsior is a fast-expanding organization whose background is the treatment of children and their families.  Excelsior has continued to grow in its role as a mental health provider with WISe services, a holistic school, primary care, mental health care, and now an inpatient facility specializing in detox, behavioral rehabilitation, day treatment, and young adult residential services transition.

Through participation in the fellowship program, Dr. Bayley hopes to gain methodology and skills to better coordinate services throughout multiple specialties.  He is excited to explore the role of integrated care as it pertains to both primary care services and psychiatric services while incorporating their continuity with WISe services.  In 5 years, he hopes that fluid coordination can allow for effective access to care with prompt, consistent follow-up between primary care, mental health, and WISe programming.