The services of the Center’s well-respected STEP (Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program) clinic are now available at the UNC STEP Community Clinic of Wake County, also called Wake STEP Clinic. The outpatient clinic will serve approximately 500 Wake County patients with serious mental illness who were transferred from the Wake County Human Services Department to UNC Healthcare on July 1, 2013. Wake STEP Clinic patients will be seen at the main clinic on Falstaff Road in Raleigh and at regional offices in Wake Forest, Zebulon, Fuquay Varina, and at Rex Hospital campus.
Working closely with Wake County and Alliance Behavioral Healthcare, UNC clinicians began transitioning higher need patients in June. All patients had the opportunity to meet clinicians at a meet and greet July 13.
John H. Gilmore, MD, is medical director of the Wake STEP Clinic. He is also medical director of the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health, and the Thad and Alice Eure Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Shane W. Rau, MD, PhD, clinical director for the North Carolina Psychiatric Research Center and assistant professor in psychiatry, serves as associate medical director. Deborah Lawson, LCSW, MSW, LMFT, director of clinical services, oversees the day-to-day clinical operations.
“UNC’s presence in Wake County is a synergy of multiple programs designed to create a continuum of care for our Wake County patients” says Rau.
“Wake STEP, provides high quality outpatient clinic services, Our collaborations with our new Wake ACT (Assertive Community Treatment) Team, which provides enhanced services care to specific individuals out in the community on a 24/7 basis, to WakeBrook, providing crisis and assessment as well as multiple levels of inpatient care, to NCPRC (NC Psychiatric Research Center), conducting clinical trials, allow UNC to provide evidence based, recovery oriented, high quality care,” says Rau.
Earlier this year, UNC Healthcare also assumed operations of WakeBrook, a psychiatric hospital and crisis center previously operated by Wake County.