VA Connecticut Healthcare System has been selected as the New England site for a VA Nationally Designated Clinical Resource Hub (CRH).
The Hub is funded by the VA Office of Rural Health and VA New England Healthcare System and will work to provide much needed primary care and mental health services to sites throughout New England that lack on-site providers.
The CRH is a collaboration between the Mental Health and Primary Care Service Lines at VA Connecticut. Besides foundational mental health and primary care services, the CRH will provide specialty services such as buprenorphine for opioid addiction to hard-hit communities that lack providers.
The primary care director will be Paul Drost, MD, who currently is leading efforts at VA Connecticut to provide virtual services to veterans throughout the state.
Jennifer Doran, PhD, a staff psychologist at VA Connecticut and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, has already been providing psychotherapy services to highly rural sites in Northern Maine for two years and will direct the mental health program.
The overall CRH will be led by David Moore, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, who currently leads the Telemental Health Hub at VA Connecticut and will oversee the development of the larger integrated Hub.