Senior System Consultant, ZiaPartners, Inc., Catalina, AZ
Part-time Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA
Dr. Minkoff is a Board-Certified Addiction Psychiatrist, and recognized as one of the most preeminent experts on integrated services and systems for individuals with co-occurring serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The focus of his career began with a passion for community psychiatry, and over the years, his work has evolved to incorporate interest, experience, and expertise in ever more complex and diverse systems, services, and populations. For over 40 years, he has worked to develop services and systems within limited resources to best meet the needs and inspire the hopes of individuals, families, and populations with the greatest challenges. In that journey, he has been involved in service provision, management, and consultation in almost every area of behavioral health. Examples of this include: Chairing a SAMHSA Managed Care Initiative Panel on Co-occurring Disorders in the late nineties, and developing a national model for integrated system design for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (Comprehensive, Continuous, Integrated System of Care), which has been implemented in multiple state and local systems nationally; co-editing “Managed Mental Health Care in the Public Sector: A Survival Manual” (1997); developing a toolkit for implementing recovery-oriented integrated systems for individuals and families with all types of complexity (2001-present), including co-authoring the Center for Integrated Health Solutions Organizational Assessment Toolkit for Integration (OATI), addressing integration of health and behavioral health, in 2013. With Dr. Joseph Parks, he has published a book chapter (2016) on Primary Health Integration for adults with serious mental illness. He is currently co-chair of a committee for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry that is working on objective criteria for creating and measuring an ideal BH crisis system. He was appointed (2017-20) as one of the two non-federal psychiatrist members of the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee, created by the 21st Century CURES Act to bring multiple federal departments together to create a transformed system of care for individuals and families addressing serious mental illness and serious emotional disturbance.
For the past nineteen years, he has worked with his consulting partner Christie A. Cline, MD, MBA, to “change the world” in behavioral health systems all over the world. Their mission is to help systems organize themselves at every level, with every program, process, policy, procedure, person providing help, and every penny available, to be about the needs and hopes of the people with complex issues who need service. They have provided systems consultation on the state, county or tribal level in over 40 states, including fifteen California counties, resulting in extensive first-hand knowledge of the strengths and challenges of multiple state and county systems across the nation. They have also worked in seven Canadian provinces and 4 states in Australia, which provides useful perspective on opportunities for service improvement in the US. They have worked with progressively more complex systems and populations (primary health/behavioral health; behavioral health/intellectual and developmental disability, children’s systems of care; homeless services; criminal justice services, rehabilitation and recovery supports), developing tools and approaches, policy and funding direction, and measurement/improvement strategies, to address state and local implementation of services that leverage available resources most effectively.
Dr. Minkoff is active in influencing policy and practice on a national and state level. He is a permanent (emeritus) Board Member of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, currently Chair of the Products and Services Plank. He is the co-chair of the Committee on Psychiatry and the Community for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, which recently produced the report: People with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: Answering a Cry for Help (2016). He is a Board member for the College for Behavioral Health Leadership. He was an active participant in designing SAMHSA’s Recovery to Practice Curriculum for psychiatrists.
Previous leadership roles include:
1999-2000: Medical Director – Arbour-Fuller Hospital, Attleboro, MA
1990-98: Medical Director – Choate Health Systems and Choate Health Management, Woburn, MA
1984-89: Chief of Psychiatry – Choate-Symmes Hospital, Woburn, MA
1978-84: Executive Director – Somerville MH Clinic, Somerville, MA
Dr. Minkoff has authored dozens of peer reviewed publications, book chapters, monographs, and tools