WS Chronicle

Special to The Chronicle

Dr. Rahn Kennedy Bailey has joined Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center as chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. He is a national leader whose community-based programs focus on providing care for the traditionally underserved and those with complex medical/psychiatric conditions.

Bailey previously served a seven-year term as the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Meharry Medical College, a private, historically black graduate and professional institution in Nashville, Tenn.

Bailey is the author of “A Doctor’s Prescription for Health Care Reform,” and he is an editor for “Frontiers Journal,” “The Journal of the American Medical Association,” and “The Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.”

Bailey was the 113th president of the National Medical Association from 2012-2013, an organization that represents over 50,000 African-American doctors. He is a longtime member of the American Psychiatric Association and is also active in the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, serving two terms on the Council of Directors from 1999-2005, and then as the Scientific Program chairman in 2005. He served as president of the Tennessee Psychiatric Association from 2012-2014.

Public advocacy has been an important component of Bailey’s career. His body of work focuses on health disparities, and he is interested in helping colleagues understand the dynamics of disparities as they relate to public policy and health care reform. Bailey’s research interests include mental health disparities, stigma, advocacy, ADHD, violence and forensics.

As a practicing clinician, Bailey specializes in inpatient care, medical education and forensic evaluations. Forensic psychiatry is a subspecialty within psychiatry where medicine and the law intersect in the application of psychiatric expertise in legal contexts. Competency, criminal responsibility, legal custody, and fitness for duty are the primary types of referrals involved in his practice.

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist has a long history of providing patients with quality care.

Ongoing research in the areas of mood disorders, addictions and geriatrics are additional examples of excellence. In March, the Wake Forest School of Medicine residency program matched all seven positions accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The School of Medicine now has 28 general psychiatry residents and five child/adolescent fellows for fiscal year 2016.

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine has taken several steps to increase its footprint in the community heading in a new direction of growth as it continues to provide quality clinical service, excellent educational opportunities and high level research.

*Currently, the inpatient psychiatry unit at Wake Forest Baptist has 44 beds, all fully staffed.

*The clinic has reorganized its scheduling system in order to enhance patients’ access to appointments; this includes adding earlier appointment times to make it easier for patients to manage their schedules.

*As a provider of a diverse form of care, the department strives to treat patients with varied medical and psychiatric co-morbidities. For example, last fiscal year the department evaluated and treated over 16,000 patients. This year, we expect to see that number increase to over 20,000.

*The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine is actively recruiting in order to add four full-time faculty positions to the treatment team. This will increase the total faculty to 22 members.