McLean and the Partners HealthCare Family

McLean Hospital actively contributes to and benefits from an array of Partners HealthCare-wide collaborative projects. These include improving patient and family access to each level of care, joint training programs, and redesign of the healthcare system.

The close collaboration between McLean and other Partners entities is most evident to patients when they are able to rapidly access the clinical services they urgently need. McLean’s Clinical Evaluation Center has developed accelerated “throughput” and direct admissions methods that spare patients the unnecessary delays so common in emergency rooms (ERs) when they are in acute distress and help those ERs reduce unnecessary costs.

Large-scale technological upgrades are made possible by McLean’s membership in Partners. Colleagues across the system are currently working together on the implementation of “Partners eCare”, a state-of-the-art electronic medical record system that will be accessed by all Partners clinicians. McLean professionals are helping to craft the psychiatry module for Partners eCare, refine special privacy protections and plan the related research database.

Shared training programs are best exemplified by the MGH-McLean Psychiatry Residency, the MGH-McLean Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Residency, and the Partners-wide Addiction and Geriatric Psychiatry fellowships.

McLean, Partners and all United States healthcare providers have begun to prepare for the transition to population management. This looming payment reform can only be accomplished with a major redesign of care delivery that places greater value on primary care and mental health services. McLean and Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health (PPMH) leadership is, therefore, working closely with primary care innovators to better integrate efforts in the new “patient-centered medical home” model. McLean and PPMH are already creatively supporting primary care pediatricians via three Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project hubs across the Partners system.