NC-PAL (NC Psychiatry Access Line) is a free telephone consultation and education program to help health care providers address the behavioral health needs of pediatric and perinatal patients.
Behavioral Health Consultants can respond to questions about behavioral health and local resources and can connect providers to one of the on-call, board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrists to assist with diagnostic clarification and medication management questions within 30 minutes.
There are over 6,000 providers who treat children in NC with medications for psychiatric conditions including pediatricians, family physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists and child and adolescent psychiatrists. Only 130 of these 6,000 are child and adolescent psychiatrist and they treat less than 15% of children.
NC-PAL aims to provide education to these professionals such that children with behavioral health conditions have access to high quality evidence-based evaluation and care.
NC-PAL also has other initiatives with DSS, Schools, and CDSAs.
