Behavioral Health Access and Assessment Nurse

Site: Mass General Brigham Incorporated

 

Mass General Brigham relies on a wide range of professionals, including doctors, nurses, business people, tech experts, researchers, and systems analysts to advance our mission. As a not-for-profit, we support patient care, research, teaching, and community service, striving to provide exceptional care. We believe that high-performing teams drive groundbreaking medical discoveries and invite all applicants to join us and experience what it means to be part of Mass General Brigham.

 

 

Job Summary

Mass General Brigham (MGB) Behavioral & Mental Health (BMH) is the enterprise clinical service supporting the design of MGB’s behavioral and mental health care around patients’ needs; delivering high quality, evidence, and team-based, compassionate care to MGB patients, employees, and their families, while increasing access, improving health equity, optimizing systemwide assets and advancing new and innovative approaches to care. The MGB BMH team supports and collaborates with all Psychiatry Departments & services across the MGB network.

In October 2022, MGB BMH launched a Central Access Team to address the behavioral health capacity crisis across the hospital system. This team shifted the administrative burden of bed-finding from the frontline clinical teams to a central team, which has supported more focused patient care, a reduction in duplicative work and better overall experience for patients and providers. This effort has supported reopening of behavioral health inpatient beds, reduction in boarding times, and a 10% increase in inpatient behavioral health census across MGB. A goal of the next phase of this effort is a greater focus on the specific behavioral and medical needs of each patient to ensure that each is placed in the setting that will most appropriately meet their needs as efficiently as possible, whether at the time of admission or at the time of discharge. Beyond these specific patient needs, additional focus is on assessment and recommendations pertaining to current and future resourcing on inpatient behavioral health units across MGB; ensuring that the resources available within MGB are meeting the needs of the patients being served.

Reporting directly to the MGB BMH Medical Director for Acute Care Services with an indirect reporting relationship to the MGB BMH Vice President of Nursing and, on a daily basis, working in very close collaboration with the MGB BMH Central Access Manager. The MGB BMH Access & Disposition Nurse plays a critical role serving as a clinical expert on the behavioral and medical needs of complex behavioral health patients within several different contexts:

• Admissions: The Nurse serves as a key member of the BMH Central Access Team using knowledge of inpatient medical competencies and medical clearance criteria to support early identification of placement barriers while helping to provide clarity around a patient’s needs and the most appropriate treatment setting in which to meet them. The Nurse works closely with sending and receiving clinicians to identify and recommend resources that may be necessary to secure timely care for behavioral health patients. This individual will play a key role in advancing the work to update unit capabilities and competencies and will track and communicate, on a regular basis, trends in barriers to admission. In addition, this individual will work with the team to track and communicate trends in external referrals as well.
• Discharge: The MGB BMH Central Access & Disposition Nurse works closely with behavioral health leaders systemwide to support the complex disposition planning for patients in behavioral health units, using knowledge of post-acute medical competencies and complex patient resource needs to proactively identify patients at risk of prolonged admission, specifically identifying barriers to discharge and resource needs. The Access and Disposition Nurse works closely with clinical leadership across MGB inpatient behavioral health units, emergency departments and medical/surgical settings to support behavioral health throughput systemwide.
• Acuity and Resource Need Identification and Assessment: Spanning both contexts above, the MGB BMH Central Access & Disposition Nurse plays a key role in developing a new tool within the medical record to help quantify patient behavioral and medical acuity and resource need to better report both patient needs, inpatient unit acuity and nursing workload status. This initiative will involve high levels of clinical expertise in the area of psychiatric mental health nursing, data analysis, stakeholder engagement and systemwide collaboration.

A demonstrated commitment to access to care, operational efficiency, and implementation of technology and innovation are key tenets of this new role. Success in the role will be dependent upon an interest in and ability to lead in a remote, data-driven, technology-enabled environment. This individual plays a key role in the refinement of data analytics to assess unit and patient acuity. A strong interest and competency in data analytics and clinical implementation experience within a matrixed environment is strongly preferred. It is critical that the MGB BMH Central Access & Disposition Nurse have a ‘system mindset’ and a strong ability to build and maintain multidisciplinary and cross-site relationships within an integrated healthcare system. They will coordinate closely and collaborate openly with multidisciplinary and institutionally diverse teams, including MGB BMH employees, as well as physicians, nurses, and capacity leaders for each MGB asset. They will have knowledge of service capabilities at all MGB hospitals and other assets, and a dedicated approach that matches patient need to site of care in the most timely and efficient manner possible. Experience and comfort with change management and complex capacity and demand constraints will be crucial for success in this role. The MGB BMH Central Access & Disposition Nurse will be a valued member of the Behavioral & Mental Health team and their input, feedback, and recommendations will be regularly sought by leadership to further strengthen our system-based capacity management and achieve our collective goals to improve patient care.

The Nurse serves as a key member of the Behavioral & Mental Health Central Access Team, utilizing knowledge of inpatient medical competencies and medical clearance criteria to support the early identification of placement barriers. This helps provide clarity around a patient's needs and the most appropriate treatment setting in which to meet them.

Essential Functions

Inpatient Behavioral Health Services – This position spans our centralized and coordinated work around inpatient admissions and dispositions to other levels of care throughout the system.
• Provides expertise around the behavioral and medical needs of behavioral health patients, clearly identifying and communicating placement barriers and assessing most appropriate treatment setting based on inpatient competencies and the resources necessary to meet patient needs.
• Provides thought partnership related to behavioral health access and disposition, supporting efficient behavioral health throughput system-wide, at the time of admission, throughout admission, and at the time of discharge.
• Works closely with MGB BMH leadership to deliver on an established cadence, the performance and efficiency metrics to track, analyze, and present data demonstrating progress, impact, and areas for improvement. This individual plays a key role in continuous process improvement and enhanced performance metric development.
• Provides leadership around change management efforts, maintaining positive relationships with all layers of stakeholders to ensure active engagement and broad commitment to system-focused culture.
• Works closely with clinical leaders systemwide regarding escalation when placement barriers or challenges arise or when a dispute exists between the site leadership and centralized bed placement recommendation.
• Works closely with BMH leadership team to regularly monitor, compile, analyze, prepare, and report out data and outcomes related to central access and central disposition planning.
• Prepares and presents updates, findings, reports, and recommendations to internal and external stakeholders/leaders as needed for assigned projects.
• Serves as a liaison to the behavioral health inpatient and admissions nursing leaders across the system

System Collaboration
• Works closely with Clinical Leaders across the system to foster effective change management in the midst of systemwide integration, development and consultation regarding new inpatient behavioral health admissions workflows, data reporting requirements to enhance access across the system
• Establishes contacts and strong working relationships with clinical and administrative leaders across system entities and throughout the MGB BMH team to support program development and implementation activities.
• Manages projects as assigned by MGB BMH leadership.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

 

Education

• Bachelor's Degree Nursing required or Master's Degree Nursing preferred

Licenses and Credentials

• Massachusetts Registered Nurse (RN) license required

Experience

• At least 8-10 years of inpatient psychiatry unit and/or emergency