Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC Part of New Pennsylvania Program to Improve Behavioral Health for Kids

July 22, 2016

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC’s primary care network, Children’s Community Pediatrics (CCP), has been selected by the HealthChoices managed care organizations to take part in a new program to improve behavioral health treatment for children in the state.

Ted Dallas, secretary of the Department of Human Services in Pennsylvania, announced the selection of organizations to administer behavioral health treatment through the new Telephonic Psychiatric Consultation Service Program (TiPS). The announcement was made today at Children’s Hospital, with Dallas joining Christopher Gessner, president of Children’s Hospital, and Abigail Schlesinger, M.D., medical director, Community Based Services, Behavioral Science Division of Children’s Hospital.

TiPS is a new program designed to provide real-time resources to physicians seeking consultation and advice for pediatric patients with behavioral health concerns who are served by Medicaid. A physician who uses the TiPS service will have access to a child and adolescent psychiatrist to discuss treatment options and get help linking the child to appropriate treatment if services outside of primary care are deemed necessary.

CCP, through its award-winning behavioral health program, will be manning the hotline to provide telephone consultation to any physician who is prescribing behavioral health medications to kids. 

“It is critical that all children, regardless of where they live, have access to quality health care services,” said Dallas. “Access to child psychiatry has been a significant problem nationwide for years. Today’s announcement means that more of our kids will have the services they need, and not just another prescription.”

“Being able to provide behavioral health services in the primary care setting was a vision of ours and something that we’ve been doing for 8 years now,” said Dr. Schlesinger. “We’re excited to partner with the state of Pennsylvania to further enhance families’ ability to access behavioral health services in our region.”

CCP will serve the 26 counties in both the Southwest and Northwest zones. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will serve the Southeast zone and Penn State Children’s Hospital will serve the Northeast and Lehigh/Capital zones.