New BW/F Psychiatry Program- BWH Bulletin - For and about the People of Brigham and Women's Hospital
New BW/F Psychiatry Program- BWH Bulletin - For and about the People of Brigham and Women's Hospital
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February 16, 2001
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In This Issue:
BWH launches new Quality Rounds series
Bringing CIMIT and BWH Together
BWH Vital Signs 1st Quarter Stats
BWH Announces March Town Meeting
Most Valuable Pharmacists
Parents In a Pinch
Pike Notes
Nesson Ambulatory Care Center Update
Faulkner Insert
Harvard Vanguard channels care to Faulkner
Leading HVMA’s integration
Communicating with our patients
New BW/F Psychiatry Program
When Jonathan F. Borus, MD, was named the chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Faulkner Hospital last month, he compared the combined psychiatry programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Faulkner to a healthy marriage. Effective January 16, BWH and Faulkner have created a single integrated psychiatry department. “It made sense to combine the two clinical services, which are very complementary,” said Borus, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has headed BWH’s Psychiatry Department since 1990. “Integration promotes the strengths of both sites.” As always, BWH Psychiatry staff will provide expert psychiatric and substance abuse consultations to BWH physicians caring for medical, surgical and obstetric inpatients at the hospital. They will continue to co-manage the care of medical-surgical patients who also suffer from a psychiatric or substance abuse disorders, as well as patients having difficulty coping with the emotional aspects of serious medical illness. The ambulatory psychiatry service will continue serving patients who receive their medical care at BWH. However, BWH has no hospital beds for patients with acute psychiatric disorders such as severe depression or psychosis, or substance abuse disorders such as alcoholism or cocaine abuse. For patients with psychiatric disorders, Faulkner has a 14-bed inpatient psychiatry unit, which will expand to 17 beds in mid-February and has the possibility of increasing to 24 by year’s end. It also has a partial hospitalization program providing short-term, step-down care for psychiatric patients still needing intensive follow-up after an acute hospitalization, and an ambulatory day-treatment center for those patients who need longer care to maintain their highest level of functioning, for example, someone with chronic depression or schizophrenia. In addition, Faulkner has an excellent Addiction Recovery Program, led by Alan Wartenberg, MD, FASAM, FACP, with inpatient, partial hospital and outpatient components for patients suffering from substance abuse disorders. This program fills another former gap at BWH. “Instead of referring BWH patients with substance abuse to other places, we now can send them to ‘ourselves’ at the excellent Faulkner program,” said Borus. The academic programs of the BWH department will now be shared with Faulkner. Psychiatry residents from the BWH-sponsored Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program, which recently received the award for creativity in psychiatric education from the American College of Psychiatrists, will begin rotating on the Faulkner inpatient psychiatry unit in July. Collaborative research opportunities also are being identified. Borus believes, “This integration will work because it is a ‘win-win’ in every way.”