Finding behavioral health providers is hard. Finding providers equipped to treat eating disorders is harder, according to Howard Weeks, MD, chief medical officer at Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center.
Eating Recovery Center is launching its own two-year residency program to train physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other professionals on treating eating disorders.
“This is intensive work. It’s not something where you can go to a weekend course and be certified,” Dr. Weeks said. “This takes treating several hundred patients, and seeing them for an extended period of time. We’ve developed a very robust curriculum that would match what you see in any formal residency.”
Providers have advocated for a formal residency program to train physicians in caring for patients with eating disorders, Dr. Weeks said.
Denver-based Pathlight operates residential, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient behavioral health programs in five states. The company is the largest integrated system providing eating disorder treatment, operating 35 eating disorder recovery centers.
“Knowing that hasn’t occurred yet, we decided we’re going to do it ourselves. That’s the only way that I can ensure as our clinicians come in, that we’re training them with the expertise and experience that we’ve learned. I want to make sure that’s passed on to the next generation of physicians,” he said.
As Eating Recovery Center trains clinicians through its residency program, the organization is also exploring how emerging technologies can support, but not replace, these providers.
AI technology has the chance to transform behavioral health, but it’s not going to take over the role of a therapist, Dr. Weeks said.
“I think AI is going to be a transformative tool, but it’s going to be transformative in the sense that it’s going to allow us to be a lot more efficient with our documentation. I do not think it’s going to put a therapist or psychiatrist out of a job, but what it is going to do is enable me to more effectively collect information, sort it and document it.”
The technology will give behavioral health providers more time to spend on treating patients, but Dr. Weeks said he does not think AI will be transformative in therapeutic interactions. Eating Recovery Centers is constantly working to improve treatments and therapies, he said, but eating disorders are more complex than one innovation.
