The Telemental Health Service at VA Puget Sound, also known as Promoting Access to Telemental Health (PATH), recently received a My VA Access Grant for nearly $230,000. Proposal feedback included high praise, such as “This proposal was highly innovative and should provide valuable information to the field.” The project team is led by Bradford Felker, MD, and includes key members Russell McCann, PhD, Greg Reger, PhD, and John Fortney, PhD.

Telemental Health (TMH) is an important modality for providing access to clinical care and will continue to become integrated into mental health treatment. Currently, TMH teams locate specially trained TMH providers on one telehealth team and use a “Hub and Spoke” model to provide care from this team to patients at various sites. However, with the rapid expansion of TMH technologies and improved interfaces supporting patients’ ability to use these technologies, this “Hub and Spoke” model is becoming obsolete.

Creating a tele-network that links all mental health providers from different mental health teams with patients should greatly improve access and the variety of mental health services that can be provided. This project will use a Quality Improvement approach to study the implementation of TMH across the VA Puget Sound Mental Health Service Line. The implementation will be guided by PARiHS criteria (Evidence, Context, Facilitation) and Implementation Facilitation (External and Internal Facilitators). Outcomes will be based on RE-AIM criteria (Reach, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance). Products will include a TMH Implementation Tool as well as a TMH Implementation Manual to be made available nationally to any site wanting to create such a telemental health network.