Emily Snow, senior administrative director of behavioral health at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, spoke with Becker’s about a range of topics including strategies to mitigate the growing need for more capacity to treat behavioral health needs.
Editor’s note: This response was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How do we deal with the deficit of behavioral health providers in the U.S.?
Emily Snow: Well, psychiatrists are some of the lowest paid physicians in the field of medicine. One thing is, we need to engage medical students early and educate them about the field of psychiatry, and I think we need to help psychiatrists pay back their student loans.
Hospital systems or insurance companies, different companies need to consider fellowships or endowments for psychiatrists coming out of school. We need to look at updated payment structures for psychiatrists as well.
The other piece is to make sure we have total healthcare integration, meaning that we look at behavioral health as part of whole health, and that should be part of what we treat on a regular basis. That will help with the psychiatric shortage.
Approximately seven out of every 10 visits to a primary care physician involve discussing behavioral health issues, and if we can empower those primary care physicians to be able to treat the the people with subclinical symptoms and some less complex behavioral health disorders, we would be able to free up psychiatric time and psychiatrists to help people who have higher acuity needs and more complex medication needs.
