"Mental Health Care - How Are We Doing?": A Program of the Health Care Delivery Section

Under the impetus of the Affordable Care Act, and driven by increasing concern over accessibility and availability, mental health care is undergoing rapid and significant change designed to increase access and improve care. The Section on Health Care Delivery has assembled a distinguished panel of experts and practitioners to review developments in three of the most significant areas. The moderator will be Harold Pincus, MD, Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and a major national figure in mental health policy, who will give us an overview of the current state of mental health policy. Sherry Glied, PhD, Dean of the Wagner School and author of several books and articles on mental health, will discuss how well parity between mental and physical health is being realized in practice; Henry Chung, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Montefiore’s Care Management Program, will talk about what we are learning about how to make collaborative models between mental and physical health care successful; and Paul Appelbaum, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law at Columbia University will talk about opportunities  and ethical questions opened up by technology, e.g., telemedicine and telemonitoring.

Harold Pincus, MD, is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Director of Quality and Outcomes Research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and co-director of Columbia’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Dr. Pincus also serves as a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation. He is the national director of the Health and Aging Policy Fellows Program (funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and the John A. Hartford Foundation), and directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s National Program on Depression in Primary Care and the John A. Hartford Foundation’s national program on Building Interdisciplinary Geriatric Research Centers. He has contributed over 400 scientific publications on health services research, science policy, research career development and the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Among other recent projects, he led the national evaluation of veterans’ mental health services, the redesign of primary care/ behavioral health relationships in New Orleans, a National Institutes of Health-funded national study of research mentoring and evaluation of major federal and state programs to integrate health and mental health care. He co-chairs the WHO/ICD 11 Technical Advisory Group on Quality and Patient Safety, and National Quality Forum Behavioral Health Standing Committee.  He also co-chairs the Advisory Committee for the PCORI-funded New York City Clinical Data Research Network and was recently appointed Co-Chair of the Measurement Application Partnership which is charged to review all quality measures under the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Pincus received the William C. Menninger Memorial Award of the American College of Physicians, Research Mentorship Award from the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association, Vestermark Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and American Psychiatric Association, among other honors. He is a member of Columbia’s faculty practice and worked one evening a week for twenty-two years at a public mental health clinic caring for patients with severe mental illnesses.

Sherry Glied, PhD, became Dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in August 2013.  From 1989-2013, Dr. Glied was Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She was Chair of the department from 1998-2009. On June 22, 2010, Dr. Glied was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served in that capacity from July 2010 through August 2012. She had previously served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton. Dr. Glied’s principal areas of research are in health policy reform and mental health care policy.

Henry Chung, MD, is Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Montefiore Care Management Organization (CMO) and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is also Medical Director of the Montefiore Accountable Care Organization (ACO), an awardee of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations Pioneer ACO Program. Dr. Chung was the 2012 recipient of the Lewis and Jack Rudin Prize for Medicine and Health awarded by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Greater New York Hospital Foundation for his contributions to demonstrating how the health care delivery system can work effectively with partners in public health and the community to address disease prevention and community wellness.  In 2014, he was appointed to the National Advisory Council of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Chung and Montefiore Medical Center were recently awarded a 3 year, $5.5 million grant by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations to integrate behavioral healthcare in primary care across all ages, using the collaborative care model.  The model will be enhanced by using various forms of technology support and also by using a case based payment model to help with financial sustainability of the program.

Paul S. Appelbaum, MD, is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law, and Director, Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics, Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University; a Research Psychiatrist at the NY State Psychiatric Institute; and an affiliated faculty member, Columbia Law School.  He directs Columbia’s Center for Research on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic, and Behavioral Genetics, and heads the Clinical Research Ethics Core for Columbia’s Clinical and Translational Science Award program. He is the author of many articles and books on law and ethics in clinical practice and research, including four that were awarded the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award from the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.  He is the current chair of the DSM Steering Committee for APA. Dr. Appelbaum is Past President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. Dr. Appelbaum has received the APA’s Isaac Ray Award for "outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence," was the Fritz Redlich Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.