WITH Grantee’s commitment to providing Healthcare Services to People with Disabilities
“I recently saw for the first time an 18 year old woman with several severe developmental issues. I am happy to see her, but I have no training in any of the problems that she has, and she has no problems in which I am trained. I am worried that the care she would get from me would not be the highest. None of my colleagues have any more expertise than I do, which is a weakness of our clinical program.”
This is the kind of complaint that Clarissa Kripke,MD, FAAFP and Director of Developmental Primary Care, Department of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF hears from the medical community all too often, and she decided to do something about it.
The Office of Developmental Primary Care (ODPC) is a program within the Department of Family and Community Medicine that is dedicated to improving health outcomes for people with developmental disabilities across the lifespan. It is a program that WITH Foundation has proudly supported over the years and it’s been rewarding to watch the program evolve.
At the core of the program are CART Services, a multidisciplinary mobile health care consult team providing services to people with developmental disabilities, clinicians, family members and support professionals throughout northern California.
How do CART Services work?
The Office of Developmental Primary Care has prepared this FAQ:
(Description: A brown skinned man sitting in a chair and looks at an iPad held by young female child with brown skin)
What is CART Services?
CART Services is a multidisciplinary mobile health care consult team providing services to people with developmental disabilities, clinicians, family members and support professionals throughout northern California. Our primary focus is adolescents and adults. We are a program of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Our team includes experts in primary care, nursing, psychiatry, psychology and caregiver support.
The CART Services Team is supported by Alta California, Far Northern, Golden Gate, North Bay, and Redwood Coast Regional Centers.
What services does CART provide?
CART Services include:
- Phone and email consultations
- Information and resources (http://odpc.ucsf.edu)
- Telemedicine consultations
- In-service training and grand rounds for health care professionals
- Training’s for patients, families or service providers
- Comprehensive, multidisciplinary consults in patients’ homes
What is a Comprehensive Consult?
A comprehensive consult is a limited service that is available to clients referred by one of our contracting regional centers. Generally, these clients have complex health, medical, or mental health issues, that may put them at risk of losing their community placement. The purpose of the consult is to offer ideas to improve the health, services, and supports that promote the client’s overall well-being.
Consults include an extensive record review, in-person assessment, and summary report. Consults are typically conducted in the client’s home and last approximately three hours. The make-up of the consultation team is determined by the client’s needs. Anywhere from three to six team members may attend a consult. When possible, a physical exam is conducted during the consult. If appropriate, the consult may also include a formalized assessment of the primary caregiver’s needs.
Between 2-4 weeks following the consultation, the team provides a written report summarizing our findings. In addition to the summary, the report will also include recommendations and next steps. A week after sending out the report, the lead clinician on the team conducts a follow-up phone call with the regional center service coordinator to answer any questions they may have.
To date, we have conducted 26 comprehensive consults throughout Northern California.
We are grateful for our partnership with UCSF’s Office of Developmental Primary Care (ODPC) and for the ways in which their program fulfills WITH’s mission.