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NC Psychiatry Access Line aims to train 1,000 providers and expand consult lines
Summary
Dr. Gary Maslow described NCPAL's consultation services, training (28-hour Reach mini-fellowships), current reach (over 1,000 providers engaged, 500 trained), and plans to add adult and substance-use consultation lines this year.
Dr. Gary Maslow, a child psychiatrist and primary care pediatrician at Duke, described the North Carolina Psychiatry Access Line (NCPAL) as an infrastructure program to support primary care clinicians with real-time psychiatric consultation, referrals, and practice support.
Maslow said NCPAL is supported by state Medicaid and federal grants (HRSA and SAMHSA) and provides five-day-a-week consultation for pediatric and perinatal care with referral coordination and in-depth education. The program also offers 'Reach' mini-fellowships (28 hours) to train primary care clinicians in mental health care; Maslow said more than 500 clinicians have completed the training and over 1,000 providers have used the phone line to date.
"Our goal is to get to 1,000 in the next three years," Maslow said, describing a statewide expansion aim to reach counties that currently lack specialty mental health capacity. He also said the program hopes to add adult and substance-use consultation lines ("press 3" or "press 4" style routing) to broaden support for family doctors and other adult care providers.
Maslow emphasized that the model combines education and on-demand consultation so primary care clinicians can manage more behavioral health needs locally and that continued training and recruitment are central to overcoming an uneven county-level distribution of specialists.
