The management of mental health conditions in primary care is becoming increasingly prevalent, and represents a challenge for today's clinicians. To facilitate the care of patients, Wingra Family Medical Center (a residency teaching clinic within the University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine) has adopted an integrative medical home model in which psychologists, primary care clinicians, and pharmacists jointly provide coordinated medical and psychiatric care. Casey Gallimore, clinical assistant professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division, has been providing psychiatric care as the pharmacist member of the behavioral health team at Wingra for the past 18 months. While the benefits of integrated behavioral health care teams in the primary care setting have been well established, the involvement of a clinical pharmacist is a relatively novel approach to patient care. Gallimore hopes that her efforts will help to better establish the role of pharmacy in integrated behavioral health care and serve as a model for psychiatric patient care in similar primary care settings.
In a typical clinic day, Gallimore works jointly with faculty physicians, medical residents and psychologists to provide psychotropic drug consultations ranging from recommendations for medication changes to management of adverse drug effects to advising on necessary laboratory monitoring. She is also available to provide patients with medication education and answer questions during clinic visits. Over half of the patients for which Gallimore has provided care have two or more mental health conditions that include, but are not limited to, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, attention-deficithyperactivity disorder and insomnia. So far the integration of pharmacy has been well accepted by Wingra's behavioral health team with 75 percent of the pharmacist's medication recommendations being accepted. The next step in the process will be a formal evaluation to determine if pharmacy's involvement improves drug therapy outcomes related to psychotropic medication use. Gallimore has recently been accepted into the masters program in Clinical Investigation through the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) and hopes to continue focusing her research efforts on psychiatric pharmacy services within an integrated medical home model.
Future Studies
Casey Gallimore, clinical professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division, has been accepted into the masters program in Clinical Investigation through ICTR for the Fall 2011 semester. Gallimore’s current practice site is Wingra Family Medical Center where she’s involved in the team management of patients with mental health conditions. Within the graduate program Gallimore hopes to expand research efforts in the area of psychiatric pharmacy services within an integrated medical home model.
