KARI BUNKERS, MD. Director of Mayo Clinic's Population Health Committee (Rochester, Minn)
On the top challenge
"I believe the most pressing healthcare concern for Minnesota is affordable access to healthcare and, even more so for a subset of patients, timely affordable access to professionals skilled in helping people living with mental illness. More than 500,000 adult Minnesotans, on average, are mentally ill, yet only 48 percent of them are treated, according to a December 2015 whitepaper from the Minnesota Hospital Association."
On the hospital's response
"An Integrated Behavioral Health Program at Mayo Clinic was developed to address this growing problem, and we are in the process of implementing this throughout Mayo Clinic Health System. Integrated Behavioral Health includes a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, advance practice nurses and RN care coordinators. We have implemented models of care coordination for adult and adolescent depression and for complex medical patients. We have imbedded cognitive behavioral therapy into primary care with ongoing measurement of outcomes. We have tested our models against those published in the literature to ensure the best possible outcomes for our patients before spreading the models more broadly within our system. Our mission is to 'provide timely access to high-quality, evidence-based care for adults and children in our primary care population experiencing behavioral health problems.'"