John Kern

Background

About John Kern

John Kern, MD serves as Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His work focuses on the integration of primary care and behavioral health. He has been involved in several large-scale learning collaboratives to support integration via the Collaborative Care model, and also the integration of health services into behavioral health to improve the health outcomes of people living with serious mental illness. Prior to his UW appointment, he was for 22 years the Chief Medical Officer at Regional Mental Health Center in Merrillville, IN, where he developed and supervised several collaborative care programs, and a SAMHSA grant providing primary care for a seriously mentally ill population, and then developed and served as Chief Medical Officer of a new Federally Qualified Health Center. In Washington he has been developing curriculum and tools to support the medical care of people with serious mental illness in Behavioral Health Agencies across the state, mostly recently with the development of durable training materials for case managers supporting health outcomes for people with SMI. He has published on integrated care for psychiatrists, the care of bipolar disorder in the primary care setting and contributed to the recently-published white paper: “Psychiatry’s Role in Improving the Physical Health of Patients With Serious Mental Illness: A Report From the American Psychiatric Association.” Also recently published was the white paper from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing Medical Directors Institute:"Organizing the Psychiatric Workflow Within A Team-Based Framework." He is one of very few psychiatrists with substantial expertise in integration of primary care and behavioral health in both directions, as well as experience as a primary care administrator. He has special interest in furthering the implementation of integrated models, in improving the quality and effectiveness of training and implementation tools. He has offered consultative services to a number of healthcare organizations seeking to incorporate behavioral health services into an integrated model of care.