The Child Psychiatry Access Network (CPAN) offers teleconferencing and telephonic consultations to primary care providers so they can easily connect with the behavioral health community and its experts in order to better serve the pediatric population facing mental, behavioral or developmental disorders.
Dr. Mili Khandheria and Brittany Mumford, behavior health care manager, share their insight.
Selected Podcast
CPAN Program Expands Care for Children Facing Mental, Behavioral or Developmental Disorders
Featured Speaker:
Dr. Khandheria earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Texas Tech. She went on to earn her medical degree and Master’s in Business Administration at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Dr. Khandheria completed her residency in adult psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and her fellowship in child psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She is a Medical Director for the Child Psychiatry Access Network and Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine (TCHATT) programs at Children’s Health and UT Southwestern.
She enjoys working with children and teens, believes that care collaboration helps to provide the best outcomes and that early intervention is the key to success. Dr. Khandheria looks forward to working with families regarding diagnosis and medication management.
Brittany Mumford, LPC
Brittany earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Texas Wesleyan University and is a Licensed Professional Counselor with experience working with children, adolescents and adults with multicultural backgrounds in a variety of settings. Before joining Children’s Health, she worked with children and their families who experienced human rights abuses, domestic violence and human trafficking. Brittany’s experience also includes crisis intervention, complex trauma, behavioral interventions, parenting support and care coordination. She enjoys working in multidisciplinary teams and taking a holistic approach to achieving the best outcome.
Mili Khandheria, MD | Brittany Mumford
Mili Khandheria, MD, MBADr. Khandheria earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Texas Tech. She went on to earn her medical degree and Master’s in Business Administration at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Dr. Khandheria completed her residency in adult psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and her fellowship in child psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She is a Medical Director for the Child Psychiatry Access Network and Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine (TCHATT) programs at Children’s Health and UT Southwestern.
She enjoys working with children and teens, believes that care collaboration helps to provide the best outcomes and that early intervention is the key to success. Dr. Khandheria looks forward to working with families regarding diagnosis and medication management.
Brittany Mumford, LPC
Brittany earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Texas Wesleyan University and is a Licensed Professional Counselor with experience working with children, adolescents and adults with multicultural backgrounds in a variety of settings. Before joining Children’s Health, she worked with children and their families who experienced human rights abuses, domestic violence and human trafficking. Brittany’s experience also includes crisis intervention, complex trauma, behavioral interventions, parenting support and care coordination. She enjoys working in multidisciplinary teams and taking a holistic approach to achieving the best outcome.
Transcription:
Caitlin Whyte: Welcome, you're listening to Pediatric Insights, advances, and innovations with Children's Health. I'm your host, Caitlin Whyte. The Child Psychiatry Access Network is a new program that experts at Children's Health and UT Southwestern kicked off in 2020. Its goal is to expand care opportunities for the pediatric population facing mental, behavioral, and or developmental disorders. The program allows primary care providers to access the behavioral health community and its experts through teleconferencing and telephonic consultations so that they can connect their patients directly to a specialist. Today, we're going to talk about how the CPAN program got started, the benefits of the program, and how providers can learn more. Joining us for this discussion today are Brittany Mumford, the Behavioral Healthcare Manager at Children's Health and Dr. Mili Khandheria, the Medical Director at the CPAN and Teach at Programs at Children's Health, as well as an Assistant Professor in the department of psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. First, Brittany, can you explain what CPAN is in more detail?
Brittany Mumford: The Texas legislature funded CPAN as a resource to help primary care providers address pediatric patients with mental health concerns. So CPAN includes access to child psychiatrist for a consultation, which is free it's prompt. The providers will receive a call back within 30 minutes, also consultation on nonpharmacological interventions, such as evidence based alternatives to medications and care coordination for patients who need follow up care such as resources within the community. And those will also be emailed back to the provider within 24 hours.
Host: Dr. Khandheria, can you share some pediatric behavioral health facts specific to Texas?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes. So there are actually 7 million kids in Texas, but there's actually only a little over 600 child psychiatrists. So there's only nine child psychiatrists per a hundred K kids, which is actually an incredibly low amount compared to other States. And many counties in Texas have zero child psychiatrist. In Dallas, we have several being a metropolitan area that many rural counties don't have any at all. Despite attempts at workforce expansion, this shortages are not anticipated to radically improve in the next decade. So some things to consider when thinking about the number of child psychiatrists needed is that 50% of all mental health conditions actually manifest before the age of 14. It's really important to get early intervention. By young adulthood, 75% of mental health conditions and manifested. One in four children suffer from a mental health disorder and five to 9% actually have a severe functional deficit. So these are all, some things that were being considered when creating this program.
Host: And doctor, can you tell us more about how this program began and what did it take to this program to life?
Dr. Khandheria: So, this actually came from the 86 legislatures, during that they leverage health-related institutions to approve mental health care for children and adolescents, and they formed the Texas child mental health consortium. So through this consortium, CPAN was created as well as the Texas child health access through telemedicine, T tap Program, the Community Psychiatry Workforce Expansion, and then Expanding Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship. So in turn more child psychiatrists would be out in the workforce. The mission of this consortium was advanced mental health care quality and access for all Texas children and adolescents through inter institutional collaboration, leveraging the expertise of the State health related institutions of higher education, local and State government agencies and local and state mental health organizations. So the vision of this consortium was that all Texas children and adolescents will have the best mental health outcomes possible. Specifically, our hub is powered through a partnership between UT Southwestern and Children's Health.
Host: I know this program offers access to online mental health screening tools. Can you explain those screening tools in a bit more depth?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes. So we will actually be providing the primary care physicians and NPs with access to the Vanderbilt, which assesses for ADHD PH29, which assesses for depression and Garret questionnaire, which actually assesses for a variety of anxiety disorders. And by utilizing these tools that will help aid them with diagnosis and then can track them over time to see if the patients show improvement with the aid of this program. So they'll see their initial score might be very high and then talking to us, the kid starts receiving treatment and then they can see at the next visit, has it improved and over time, have they gone into remission?
Host: So, Brittany, can you walk us through the steps that primary care providers and patients will go through in order to take advantage of this program?
Brittany Mumford: Yeah, so a provider we'll call our 1-889-901-CPAN hotline number, and we'll provide the zip code of their practice. They will be transferred to the health related institution that covers their County based on that zip code. Every County in the State of Texas is covered by an educational institution and the UT Southwestern hub covers nine counties, which include Dallas, Ellis, Costman, Rockwall, Hunt, Collin, Denton, Grayson, and Bannon. Once they're connected to their appropriate hub, a licensed behavioral health clinician will triage that call by completing an intake process and gathering information to determine whether or not a consultation is needed with a child psychiatrist, or if the behavioral health clinician can assist the provider. So if it's determined that a consultation is needed with the child psychiatrist, the behavioral health clinician will let the child psychiatrist know, and the provider will be contacted 30 minutes. If the provider need resources for their patients, the behavioral health clinician will be able to get those resources to the provider within 24 hours.
Host: And Brittany, what are the benefits of CPAN for both the primary care providers and their patients?
Brittany Mumford: So CPAN empowers the provider to continue treating their patients and only refer out when necessary. It allows the provider to feel comfortable treating behavioral health concerns with educational guidance, from a child psychiatrist and the patient doesn't experience any delays in their treatment process. So essentially CPAN is three services and one team, resource and referral assistance, behavioral planning for youth in the care of a PCP, and educational consultation in real time with a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
Host: Wonderful. Brittany, is there anything else you'd like to add about CPAN that we haven't touched on?
Brittany Mumford: Well, if providers are interested in having their clinic enrolled or needs, see pans services, they can call 1-888-901-2726
Host: And Dr. Khandheria, anything else you'd like to share?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes, actually UT Southwestern and Children's Health in collaboration with the other hubs across the state have a CPAN website in the works for providers have access to CME opportunities, which everyone needs all the time, webinars and more information regarding pediatric mental health. We are also currently working on podcasts for pediatricians and PCP. So listen to, to get some psych tidbits, there's going to be brief five to 10 minutes. Someone can listen to it on the go, in the car to learn some psych facts. And we'll have some cases that during those as well, we also hope to provide in the future some onsite training and lectures at some of our local practices across our nine counties.
Host: Well, thank you so much for this show, just chock full of information, ladies, and thanks for taking the time to share it with us. And of course, thank you for listening to Pediatric Insights. You can always find more information at children's.com. I'm your host Caitlin Whyte. Stay well.
Caitlin Whyte: Welcome, you're listening to Pediatric Insights, advances, and innovations with Children's Health. I'm your host, Caitlin Whyte. The Child Psychiatry Access Network is a new program that experts at Children's Health and UT Southwestern kicked off in 2020. Its goal is to expand care opportunities for the pediatric population facing mental, behavioral, and or developmental disorders. The program allows primary care providers to access the behavioral health community and its experts through teleconferencing and telephonic consultations so that they can connect their patients directly to a specialist. Today, we're going to talk about how the CPAN program got started, the benefits of the program, and how providers can learn more. Joining us for this discussion today are Brittany Mumford, the Behavioral Healthcare Manager at Children's Health and Dr. Mili Khandheria, the Medical Director at the CPAN and Teach at Programs at Children's Health, as well as an Assistant Professor in the department of psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. First, Brittany, can you explain what CPAN is in more detail?
Brittany Mumford: The Texas legislature funded CPAN as a resource to help primary care providers address pediatric patients with mental health concerns. So CPAN includes access to child psychiatrist for a consultation, which is free it's prompt. The providers will receive a call back within 30 minutes, also consultation on nonpharmacological interventions, such as evidence based alternatives to medications and care coordination for patients who need follow up care such as resources within the community. And those will also be emailed back to the provider within 24 hours.
Host: Dr. Khandheria, can you share some pediatric behavioral health facts specific to Texas?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes. So there are actually 7 million kids in Texas, but there's actually only a little over 600 child psychiatrists. So there's only nine child psychiatrists per a hundred K kids, which is actually an incredibly low amount compared to other States. And many counties in Texas have zero child psychiatrist. In Dallas, we have several being a metropolitan area that many rural counties don't have any at all. Despite attempts at workforce expansion, this shortages are not anticipated to radically improve in the next decade. So some things to consider when thinking about the number of child psychiatrists needed is that 50% of all mental health conditions actually manifest before the age of 14. It's really important to get early intervention. By young adulthood, 75% of mental health conditions and manifested. One in four children suffer from a mental health disorder and five to 9% actually have a severe functional deficit. So these are all, some things that were being considered when creating this program.
Host: And doctor, can you tell us more about how this program began and what did it take to this program to life?
Dr. Khandheria: So, this actually came from the 86 legislatures, during that they leverage health-related institutions to approve mental health care for children and adolescents, and they formed the Texas child mental health consortium. So through this consortium, CPAN was created as well as the Texas child health access through telemedicine, T tap Program, the Community Psychiatry Workforce Expansion, and then Expanding Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship. So in turn more child psychiatrists would be out in the workforce. The mission of this consortium was advanced mental health care quality and access for all Texas children and adolescents through inter institutional collaboration, leveraging the expertise of the State health related institutions of higher education, local and State government agencies and local and state mental health organizations. So the vision of this consortium was that all Texas children and adolescents will have the best mental health outcomes possible. Specifically, our hub is powered through a partnership between UT Southwestern and Children's Health.
Host: I know this program offers access to online mental health screening tools. Can you explain those screening tools in a bit more depth?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes. So we will actually be providing the primary care physicians and NPs with access to the Vanderbilt, which assesses for ADHD PH29, which assesses for depression and Garret questionnaire, which actually assesses for a variety of anxiety disorders. And by utilizing these tools that will help aid them with diagnosis and then can track them over time to see if the patients show improvement with the aid of this program. So they'll see their initial score might be very high and then talking to us, the kid starts receiving treatment and then they can see at the next visit, has it improved and over time, have they gone into remission?
Host: So, Brittany, can you walk us through the steps that primary care providers and patients will go through in order to take advantage of this program?
Brittany Mumford: Yeah, so a provider we'll call our 1-889-901-CPAN hotline number, and we'll provide the zip code of their practice. They will be transferred to the health related institution that covers their County based on that zip code. Every County in the State of Texas is covered by an educational institution and the UT Southwestern hub covers nine counties, which include Dallas, Ellis, Costman, Rockwall, Hunt, Collin, Denton, Grayson, and Bannon. Once they're connected to their appropriate hub, a licensed behavioral health clinician will triage that call by completing an intake process and gathering information to determine whether or not a consultation is needed with a child psychiatrist, or if the behavioral health clinician can assist the provider. So if it's determined that a consultation is needed with the child psychiatrist, the behavioral health clinician will let the child psychiatrist know, and the provider will be contacted 30 minutes. If the provider need resources for their patients, the behavioral health clinician will be able to get those resources to the provider within 24 hours.
Host: And Brittany, what are the benefits of CPAN for both the primary care providers and their patients?
Brittany Mumford: So CPAN empowers the provider to continue treating their patients and only refer out when necessary. It allows the provider to feel comfortable treating behavioral health concerns with educational guidance, from a child psychiatrist and the patient doesn't experience any delays in their treatment process. So essentially CPAN is three services and one team, resource and referral assistance, behavioral planning for youth in the care of a PCP, and educational consultation in real time with a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
Host: Wonderful. Brittany, is there anything else you'd like to add about CPAN that we haven't touched on?
Brittany Mumford: Well, if providers are interested in having their clinic enrolled or needs, see pans services, they can call 1-888-901-2726
Host: And Dr. Khandheria, anything else you'd like to share?
Dr. Khandheria: Yes, actually UT Southwestern and Children's Health in collaboration with the other hubs across the state have a CPAN website in the works for providers have access to CME opportunities, which everyone needs all the time, webinars and more information regarding pediatric mental health. We are also currently working on podcasts for pediatricians and PCP. So listen to, to get some psych tidbits, there's going to be brief five to 10 minutes. Someone can listen to it on the go, in the car to learn some psych facts. And we'll have some cases that during those as well, we also hope to provide in the future some onsite training and lectures at some of our local practices across our nine counties.
Host: Well, thank you so much for this show, just chock full of information, ladies, and thanks for taking the time to share it with us. And of course, thank you for listening to Pediatric Insights. You can always find more information at children's.com. I'm your host Caitlin Whyte. Stay well.