Comprehensive Care for Complex Patients: The Medical-Psychiatric Coordinating Physician Model

'Complex patients' are a sizeable population who generally require disproportionate attention for their management and respond poorly to treatment. Their systemic medical, psychiatric and personal needs have a tendency to drain or exceed the capabilities of those who treat them whilst overutilizing health care resources. As this patient population grows, we move ever closer to a crisis in health care delivery. This volume presents an innovative team-based approach for assessing and managing diagnostically complex and management intensive patients. The physician-led 'Medical-Psychiatric Coordinating Physician (MPCP)' model not only improves patient treatment, but also provides for the containment of costs by reducing redundancy and curbing excess in the use of services. Other benefits include improved diagnostic accuracy and decision making, as well as better communication among physicians and allied health professionals. This book is essential reading for psychiatrists, primary care physicians, and physicians, directors and administrators working in multidisciplinary specialty clinics.

Steven A. Frankel, MD is Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Collaborative Psychiatry, Psychology, and Medicine, Kentfield, California. He has been in private practice as a psychiatrist in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 35 years.

James A. Bourgeois, OD, MD was until recently Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has focused his clinical and academic work on psychosomatic medicine for over 15 years. He has recently relocated to Dept of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.

Philip Erdberg, PhD is Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.