This presentation will aim to illicit conversations surrounding complex patients and will highlight the importance of well-informed, multi-level care coordination. Included will be brief touchpoints related to engagement, social needs and burnout. The intended audience is anyone that works in residential, inpatient, primary or emergency care.

Objectives: During this Webinar, attendees discussed:

1. Complex presentations; a case study of the ‘multi-visit’ patient and the ‘non compliant’ patient
2. Care coordination: a multi-disciplinary approach
3. Engagement; including barriers to engagement and inclusion of social needs
4. Burnout; assumptions and a look at implicit and explicit biases’

Speaker: Heather Wilson, LCSW
Great Plains Quality Innovation Network
Quality Health Associates of North Dakota

Wilson earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of North Dakota in 2004. Since, she has focused in the world of behavioral health and worked for the State of North Dakota for 19 years. Regarding clinical practice, Heather started her career working in a prison-setting, focused on the treatment of individuals convicted of sexual offenses. She then spent the next 17 years of her career working at a public human service agency. Clinically, she specialized in working with trauma, criminal behavior, personality disorders, crisis management, and co-occurring disorders.

Heather earned her independent clinical social work license in 2006 and since has provided a great deal of clinical supervision to other clinicians, new MSWs in the field, and has worked with several university students in field placement.

Over the past decade, in addition to clinical work, Heather was in administration, overseeing clinic operations, quality improvement and managing several change initiatives. Heather served on a statewide leadership team aimed at addressing gaps in service across the State and advocated for systems change to address these gaps. It was during this work, that Heather found a love for advocacy and her voice to “be bold” and speak up for those that don’t have a seat at the table.

In July of 2023, Heather was hired by Quality Health Associates of North Dakota as a Quality Improvement Specialist. She is excited to be the first behavioral health provider at this agency and looks forward to what can be done with this opportunity to advance health, equity and access.