PRHI Forms New Patient-Centered Medical Home Depression Screening Working Group, Holds Meetings on Health Equity

The Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) is taking a lead role to form a new working group as part of the HealthChoices Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Learning Network, which first met on February 25. This working group will bring together PCMHs across the state to develop recommendations and educational resources for tracking depression screening and follow-up measures, using the national specifications for these measures. The working group's recommendations and products will be disseminated through the PCMH Learning Network in 2022. 

This is a new addition to the PCMH Learning Network, which PRHI coordinates across Pennsylvania. The PCMH Learning Network aims to support the PCMH providers and Physical Health MCOs in identifying and acting on improvement strategies towards the common PCMH aims and measures, and developing an internal capacity to continuously learn, adapt, and improve.

In addition, PRHI will continue facilitating the quarterly regional learning collaborative sessions for the southwest/northwest and northeast regions of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the HealthChoices Managed Care Organizations. Health Federation of Philadelphia coordinates the sessions for the Lehigh/Capital and Southeast regions.

The regional sessions in February focused on health equity, with presentations about the Regional Accountable Health Councils, panels on language access services, and PCMH and MCO report outs and breakouts on using data to understand and respond to health disparities. The sessions in the spring, summer, and fall will focus on topics related to behavioral health, such as depression screening and follow-up (including documentation and coding), tobacco cessation counseling, Integrated Care Plans, working with MCO Special Needs Units to coordinate services for whole person care, and sharing information between specialists and primary care providers.