Medical Psychiatry Unit Consortium

What is a medical psychiatry unit?

MPUs, also known as Complexity Intervention Units (CIUs), were created to deliver optimum acute hospital care to patients who have concomitant medical and psychiatric needs. Due to their multidisciplinary nature, MPUs are also an ideal venue for engaging patients in the services they may be struggling to navigate in a fragmented health-care system.

MPU Consortium Mission

The MPU consortium aims to bring together clinicians, educators and scholars working on Medical Psychiatry Units to exchange experiences and collaborate on new initiatives to improve outcomes for patients with complex needs.

MPU Consortium Goals

The MPU Consortium is committed to advancing integrated inpatient medical and psychiatric care for patients with complex needs. We focus on identifying and studying MPU models across the U.S. and internationally, sharing effective approaches, and advocating for broader adoption and investment in this care model.

Our efforts include evaluating quality, safety, and performance metrics on MPUs; identifying patient populations who benefit most; and exploring how MPUs can improve continuity of care for individuals with serious mental illness and co-occurring medical conditions.

The Consortium also partners with advocates to ensure MPU care is grounded in what matters most to those receiving it. Through collaboration, research, and advocacy, we aim to build stronger systems of care for some of our most vulnerable patients.

We hold quarterly virtual meetings and convene a Special Interest Group session each year at the Association of Medicine and Psychiatry (AMP) annual conference.

Current Leadership

Chair: 

Marsha Wittink, MD MBE, University of Rochester 

Co-Leaders: 

Aubrey Chan, MD PhD, University of Iowa 

Susan Padrino MD Case Western, Absolut Health 

Joining the MPU Consortium:

If you are interested in more information about the MPU Consortium or to be added to the email listserv please send an email to: MedPsychUnit@URMC.Rochester.edu

Look for us at the Annual AMP meeting!

MPU Presentations and Publications

Chan AC, Wittink M, Padrino S, Kathol, R; “Thinking about starting a Medical-Psychiatry Unit (MPU)?: Lessons learned from 3 MPUs and the MPU consortium”; AMP Webinar (2021)

Wittink M, Chan AC, Padrino S; Improving Medical Outcomes for Patients with Severe Mental Illnesses: Comparison of Three Medical-Psychiatric Units in the United States, Psychother Psychosom 2022; 91 (suppl) 3-40

Wittink M, “The Fragmented Medical System, Medical-Psychiatry Integration and Targeted Care for Whom?” Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Mental Health. (2022) Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

Wittink M, Chan AC, Padrino S, Silverstein SM; The Undervalued Potential of Medical-Psychiatry Units to Improve Care for People With Severe Mental Illnesses; Psychiatric services, 2023 February 23 

Chan AC, Padrino S, Wittink M; “Identifying Patient-Centered Outcomes for Integrated Care Across the Continuum”; Association of Medicine and Psychiatry Annual Meeting Workshop, Milwaukee (2023)

Padrino S, Chan AC, van Schijndel M, Wittink M. Medical Psychiatry Units: A Delphi consensus approach to identifying essential characteristics. Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. 2024 October 4

Wittink M, Padrino S, Chan AC, Pinto C, Kim S, Gensler L; “Medical Psychiatry Units in Global Context: Implementation Across 3 Countries” Symposium at World Congress of the International Conference of Psychosomatic Medicine, Tubingen, Germany (2024) September 20     

Wittink M, Padrino S, Chan AC, Heinrich T; “Reimagining Medical Psychiatry Units Workshop” sponsored by Sextant Foundation, Mazzetti Corporation; The Association of Medicine and Psychiatry and the Faculty Guidelines Institute. (2024) Milwaukee, WI

Wittink M, Chan AC, Padrino S; “Medical-Psychiatry Units: How integrated care in the hospital can improve costs and outcomes” presented to the Mental Health Liaison Group bidirectional integrated workgroup; (2025) March 11

Pankey V, Wittink M; “Pioneering the Design and Function of Medical-Psychiatry Units” Design in Mental Health Conference, Manchester, UK (2025) June 3

Innovative Design for Integrated Care: Spotlight on Med-Psych Units

At the 2025 Design in Mental Health Conference in Manchester, AMP member Dr. Marsha Wittink (Chief of Medicine in Psychiatry, University of Rochester) and Virginia Pankey (Behavioral Health Practice Leader at HOK Architects) presented a session on the evolving role of Medical-Psychiatry Units (MPUs) in delivering whole-person care.

Their talk, "Pioneering the Design and Function of Medical-Psychiatry Units," emphasized how integrated clinical and architectural planning can improve outcomes for patients with both medical and psychiatric needs. Highlights included strategies for creating therapeutic environments that support complex care, as well as the importance of interdisciplinary staffing and evidence-based design.

The presentation underscored the value of collaboration between clinicians, designers, and health systems to support truly integrated, patient-centered care.

History of the MPU Consortium

The Association of Medicine and Psychiatry has always been a gathering place for clinicians working at the intersection of medicine and psychiatry including MPUs. Members of the Association of Medicine and Psychiatry, including pre-eminent scholar of MPUs, Dr. Roger Kathol, have been strong proponents of their value and dual-boarded physicians are ideally trained to work on and run MPUs. Yet, despite evolving evidence of the benefits of MPUs, most MPUs developed in isolation of one another with little concerted effort for organizing data or outcomes across institutions. The MPU consortium aims to change this.

MPU Clinicians and Scholars Recognized a Need for Collaboration
The first meeting was the result of a series of discussions between several AMP members who had an interest in studying and disseminating data related to the value of MPUs. Current MPU consortium chair, Dr. Marsha Wittink, met with Dr. Roger Kathol in 2018, who subsequently introduced her to MPU study group members, Dr. Maarten van Schijdel and Dr. Ashley Ellison. The international MPU study group was conducting a survey to assess the prevalence of MPUs across the United States. The idea of convening a group at the AMP meeting began to coalesce in these discussions. AMP member Dr. Aubrey Chan was also part of the initial team of organizers, having recently published a paper in Annals of Internal Medicine describing 5 MPUs across the US. (Chan et al., 2018)

The Inaugural MPU Consortium Meeting
The first MPU consortium meeting was held during the 2019 AMP conference in Atlanta Georgia. Nearly 60 conference attendees joined the reception and brainstormed about experiences on MPU and ways to collaborate and collect data.

Among those in attendance was Dr. Vicki Kijewski, the medical director of the first known MPU in the US at the University of Iowa. Dr. Kijewski and Dr. Telva Olivares (Director of Medicine and Psychiatry Services at the University of Rochester) talked about their well-oiled units and some of the many things they have learned about running successful units along the way. Both physicians have been incredible resources over the years for others interested in developing MPUs.

Other AMP members, including Dr. Susan Padrino and Dr. Brad McConville, talked about the challenges and successes of building their new units at University Hospitals of Cleveland (Ohio) and Tulane University respectively. Other AMP members who were in various stages of thinking about starting MPUs joined the meeting from Kalamazoo, University of Texas, UC Davis, SUNY Downstate, Augusta University, Cincinnati, St. Louis University, Southern Illinois University, University of Kentucky and Wisconsin.

The first actionable item that resulted from the meeting was the creation of an email list-serv to continue conversations virtually. Soon after, we created a Google Drive folder to collect resources, relevant publications and clinical protocols (see below). We are excited to continue to develop the consortium and welcome new members. We will plan to have a virtual meeting for the next AMP meeting in 2020 that has been moved online.