Comcare hopes to co-locate clinic with GraceMed on North Amidon

Comcare and GraceMed are teaming up to try to help people better manage their mental and physical health.

Offering primary care and mental health care at one location is something both agencies want to try, said Comcare executive director Marilyn Cook. Comcare is the Sedgwick County’s mental health center.

Cook will ask county commissioners Wednesday to sign off on a change to the county’s capital improvement program to remodel space for a clinic that would open early next year at Comcare’s outpatient services program at 1919 N. Amidon.

“Instead of placing clinicians in GraceMed, which we may eventually do someday, GraceMed is going to co-locate a clinic across from our outpatient clinic,” Cook said Monday. “This is a new approach that’s being taken in Kansas and all over the United States to integrate primary care and behavioral, or mental health, care.”

Statistics show that people with serious mental illnesses die about 25 years earlier than people their same age who do not have a mental illness, Cook said.

“It’s primarily from chronic medical conditions that are treatable and preventable,” such as high blood presure, diabetes and and elevated cholesterol, she said.

The Sunflower Foundation provided a planning grant last year for the project, Cook said.

GraceMed will start out with one advanced nurse practioner, Cook said. GraceMed will pay for its own staff and bill for medical services provided at the location. Comcare psychiatric medical service providers – staff who can prescribe medicine – will be available to consult and collaborate with GraceMed on shared patients.

“Eventually they will have two advanced nurse practioners who will be seeing patients,” Cook said of GraceMed. “It will make it more possible for our patients to walk across the hall to get their physical health care addressed at the same time. We’re pretty excited about it because we think GraceMed is just an incredible partner.”

GraceMed CEO Dave Sanford said the one-stop-shop approach “just makes sense.”

“This is a model gaining a lot of momentum around the country,” Sanford said. “We’ll be one of the first examples of primary care going to a behavioral health clinic. Most of the integration has gone the other way.”

GraceMed operates eight clinics, five of which are at Wichita schools. There will be six exam rooms at the clinic with Comcare, he said.

The project with Comcare is a couple years in the making, Sanford said.

Comcare estimates that it will cost $170,900 to plan, design, construct and equip the clinic. Commissioners earlier this year approved transferring money from Comcare’s budget for the capital improvements.

Commissioner Tim Norton said he supports the project.

“The incidents of unaddressed mental health is escalating in communities,” he said. “And if your mental health is not good, you might not be taking care of your physical health.”

This story was originally published September 29, 2014 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Comcare hopes to co-locate clinic with GraceMed on North Amidon."