Strategic Plan Update: Expand Partnerships with Primary Care Providers and Health Stakeholders: 2

Specialists can’t address every medical, behavioral, or social issue of a child, just as primary care and social services can’t solve the issues that a specialist can. Mobile Care Chicago is able to excel in our specialty clinics because we can focus on children who have Big Problems that require the tools and expertise that our clinics provide, but we never forget that there’s a whole child to think about. For that reason, we push ourselves to build relationships with Primary Care Providers (PCPs) and other health stakeholders so we can all communicate and bring a variety of strengths to the table for each individual child and their specific health/emotional/social needs.

Our Strategic Plan calls for us to integrate our EHR more fully with PCPs so we can send electronic referrals and, most importantly, know whether or not the referral was successful. We are also pulling lists of PCPs who have a lot of overlap with our patients so we can meet with them more frequently. We are vetting new EHRs currently, as is discussed elsewhere (spoiler!). We also need to increase our staff capacity so we can more regularly interface with the hundreds of Primary Care offices in Chicago (as well as mental health professionals and other important stakeholders). We have a lot of work to do yet on this item, but accomplishing this will bring resources to our patients much more efficiently, and that’s very motivating!

-Matt Siemer, Executive Director