Florida Partners in Crisis

Bond-Apalachee Wellness Integration Center serves as 'medical home'

June 23, 2010

Jay Reeve, PhD

The Bond-Apalachee Wellness Integration Center, opened in November of 2009, is a one-stop medical home for Apalachee clients, said Jay Reeve, Ph.D., the agency's president and CEO.

Apalachee serves an average of 5,500 clients per year in an eight-county area in Florida's Big Bend region.

Reeve said the new clinic located on Apalachee's main campus in Tallahassee grew out of a partnership that began about two-and-a-half years ago.

Initially, Apalachee contracted with Bond Community Health Center, Inc. to provide mental health services and later substance abuse counseling at the center.

"We provided psychiatric care and case management services at the Bond Center for those people who felt more comfortable there than coming to a mental health center," Reeve said.

But, there was still a need to improve health care access for those people receiving behavioral health services at Apalachee.

Reeve pointed to the poor mortality rates for people with serious mental illnesses, who tend to live 20 to 25 years less than the general population because of higher rates of chronic illnesses.

In fact, research indicates that rates of circulatory disease, diabetes, obesity, chronic pulmonary disease, HIV-related illnesses, epilepsy and other diseases are significantly higher in individuals with psychiatric illnesses, especially those with schizophrenia.

Researchers say one reason is the difficulty people with mental illness have in accessing health care:  more than a third of people with mental illnesses (34 percent) are uninsured —twice the rate in the population as a whole.

Cutting the ribbon from left are DCF Secretary George Sheldon, Bond Community Health Center CEO J.R. Richards, Apalachee Center President & CEO Jay Reeve and Apalachee Board Chair Denise Pouncey-Hannah

Faced with statistics like these, the Bond Community Health Center formed a partnership with Apalachee to open a satellite clinic at the behavioral health center—the Bond-Apalachee Wellness Integration Center. 

"It's the first time in Florida that a federally-qualified health care center and a community mental health center have partnered on an equal basis," Reeve said.

All current Apalachee clients, regardless of funding, are eligible to receive services at the Wellness Integration Clinic.  Their primary health care is paid for by the Leon County government and a federal Health Resources and Services Administration grant, while Apalachee provides them with state-funded mental health services. 

The satellite clinic is open one to three days a week, depending on the need for services.

Reeve was honored in March with the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare “Visionary Leadership” award for building mutually-beneficial local professional relationships and forging partnerships with entities such as Tallahassee's Bond Community Health Center.

He and J.R. Richards, Bond's CEO, recently made a presentation on the integrated health model at a national conference in San Antonio.

Reeve thinks integrating behavioral health and primary health care is a concept that can be replicated, noting that there is interest in the concept among other behavioral health providers around the state.

"The key is to be able to establish an equal partnership and to bring the same resources to the partnership," Reeve said. "In the long run, you create a partnership for other sorts of growth and improvements."