Under the pioneering, visionary leadership of Louai Bilal, MD, the inpatient med-psych unit at KP Fremont Medical Center developed an integrated path of care for patients from across KP Northern California with severe psychiatric illness who also require treatment for medical conditions such as diabetes, wound care, and heart disease.
As founding medical director of the KP Northern California inpatient-med psych unit, Dr. Bilal assembled a team that includes psychiatrists, hospitalists, nurses, social workers, therapists, pharmacists, dieticians, and discharge specialists. “The secret sauce that makes this care exceptional is the multidisciplinary team that provides comprehensive, integrated psychiatric and medical treatment,” Dr. Bilal says.
The inpatient med-psych unit serves patients with severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression, and anorexia nervosa; advanced neuropsychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s; and those at risk of suicide or in need of court-ordered electroconvulsive therapy. Prior to its establishment, medically ill psychiatric patients who landed in KP hospitals, intensive care units, or emergency departments needed to be referred to facilities outside of KP for inpatient treatment.
“Many people with mental health disorders have physical health problems as well,” says Stuart Buttlaire, PhD, TPMG’s recently retired director for behavioral health and addiction medicine, who partnered with Dr. Bilal to establish the inpatient med-psych unit. “It’s rare to find a psychiatric hospital that will accept and have the ability to treat people with both.”
The only inpatient med-psych facility in Kaiser Permanente (and among only a handful nationally), the unit has 18 dedicated beds handling about 5,000 patient days annually. The unit prioritizes stepping patients down to appropriate after-care facilities, and as a result hospital readmission rates are less than half of national averages for patients with psychiatric and medical conditions. At the same time, the unit’s patients routinely give it high satisfaction scores of 85% to 90%.
Says Dr. Bilal: “People often tell us, ‘I have not felt like this in a very long time’ or ‘I have my life back.”