August 2024

PSYCHIATRY

SACHIN PATEL, MD, PHD, SHARES HIS VISION FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AT NM

Featuring: Sachin Patel, MD, PhD

Since joining Northwestern Medicine in 2022, Sachin Patel, MD, PhD, has focused his vision on finding new ways to advance behavioral health offerings at Northwestern Memorial Hospital while expanding services systemwide.

Dr. Patel serves as chair of Norman and Ida Stone Institute of Psychiatry at NMH and the Lizzie Gilman Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. His clinical interests are focused on treating patients with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental illnesses within inpatient and residential treatment environments.

Through investments in infrastructure, the launching of a wider range of services, and the expansion of access to the NMH Collaborative Behavioral Health Program, Dr. Patel is bringing his vision to life.

Here, Dr. Patel discusses supporting a growing program while supporting the need for greater patient access, as well as challenges, opportunities and his plans for the future of Behavioral Health at NM.
 
Q&A With Dr. Patel

What is some of the work you have done to improve Behavioral Health at NM?
When I joined the institution in 2022, it was clear that the department had a lot of talented and dedicated faculty, and significant opportunity to advance care and educational opportunities on our inpatient unit on Galter 13 as well as a new outpatient clinic. I found there was also a lot of opportunity to implement different types of services, expanding the range of patients we serve and better integrating our clinical services with educational and clinical research programs. 

So far, we have reconfigured our inpatient unit, which includes four full-time teaching services run by a dedicated group of inpatient physicians who have a lot of robust experience and specializations in high-acuity patient care. Chandrika N. Shankar, MD, is one of several new physician leaders we have recruited, and she now serves as the medical director of Inpatient Psychiatry Service at NMH. Furthermore, we have reorganized our outpatient clinic structure to better integrate and supervise our residents and fellows, while improving patient care at the same time. Overall, the culture of our flagship educational programs has really changed in a short period of time. 

We also launched some completely new service lines, such as our intravenous ketamine treatment for depression clinic as well as expanding our neuromodulation services, which include transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression. We have also expanded our clinical research program in this area with new faculty focusing on how these neuromodulation treatments can be better oriented to become more personalized for patients through the measurement of the patients’ brain wave activity and coupling this with magnetic stimulation. 

How are you addressing access?
Like every other healthcare system nationally, we are trying to come up with better ways to implement greater access for patients so they can receive the highest quality of psychiatric care possible. We are focusing primarily on our downtown footprint first, but now are at a transition point beginning to take on larger parts of the health system. We have a tremendous diversity of assets, and developing a compressive, but staged approach to integration will be critical to addressing access as a unified service. 

For example, we have a Collaborative Behavioral Health Program that was started several years ago. This program provides primary care physicians with guidance and treatment recommendations from behavioral health experts for first- and second-level care for depression and anxiety. So far, this program has been very successful in the primary clinics that are located in the Chicago area, but we recently launched a major expansion to include 70 additional clinics through the heath system in including the west and northwest suburbs between the end of the summer to early fall. 

This expansion will mean that every single primary care clinic throughout the health system will have access to some level of psychiatric care, which will be a huge game-changer! 
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In addition to this updated program, there has also been the normalization of telehealth services, which give us more of an ability to care for people outside of our geographic boundaries. People no longer have to drive three hours to see a doctor; they can do it on their lunch break. 

As you support the growing program, what’s your biggest challenge?
One of the biggest challenges that I face is finding and recruiting the most well-trained, specialized psychiatrists in the areas of addiction and geriatrics, for example. It is no secret that there is a physician shortage right now. Pretty much every medical specialty is dealing with this, and that is certainly true for psychiatry as well. Luckily, NM as a system is highly invested in behavioral health, but that doesn’t mean that recruitment cannot still be an issue from time to time. 

What’s your biggest opportunity?
One of the biggest opportunities that I am excited about is addressing the major impacts of substance use disorders on our patients and figuring out ways to increase the breadth and depth of services NM can provide. Hospital medicine is a major partner in the launching of services that provide expert substance use care for hospitalized patients.
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Additionally, over the next year or two, we can really start building post-hospital infrastructure, whether in outpatient intensive or other similar areas. This kind of infrastructure will be able to provide people with a continuity of support even after they leave the hospital. Lastly, thinking about new ways to provide rapid access behavioral health care through innovative clinical models will be a high priority in the coming year. ​
Sachin Patel, MD, Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Lizzie Gilman Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (General Psychiatry)
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