Boone County Health Center (BCHC) has added another psychiatrist, Dr. Rachel Faust of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), to their psychiatric telehealth services.
Dr. Faust is the daughter of Alan and Patty Faust of Petersburg and a 2005 graduate of Boone Central High School in Albion. In 2009, she received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Wayne State College in chemistry and health sciences with a minor in psychology.
She graduated from UNMC College of Medicine in 2013 and was a member of the Rural Health Opportunities Program. Currently she is in her last year of residency training in the Creighton-Nebraska Psychiatry Residency Program.
Following completion of her training, Dr. Faust and her husband Cole Zentner, originally from Cedar Rapids, will be moving to Hastings with their daughter Ariana, as she will be providing outpatient services at Mary Lanning, and she will continue to provide psychiatric telehealth services at BCHC. Her main areas of interest include women’s behavioral health, particularly postpartum mental health in NICU moms.
The addition of Dr. Faust comes on the heels of a June 2015 Nebraska Behavioral Health Workforce report, which found that in 2014, 91 of the 93 counties in Nebraska had a shortage of mental health psychiatrists – a mental health doctor who can prescribe medicine. In Nebraska, 84% of psychiatrists practice only in metropolitan counties. In fact, 48 counties – including all those served by BCHC – have no psychiatrist whatsoever.
“It is exceedingly difficult to access psychiatric care in rural areas. We often see long wait times for appointments and great distance for travel. I have had some families traveling one to two hours for telemedicine services, which we are now able to provide right here,” said Dr. Dodds, BCHC doctor. “Telehealth lends itself very well to psychiatric treatment in particular, because you don’t rely as much on traditional physical exam.”
“A tele-health appoint-ment consists of a private room with the ability to have an inter-active conver-sation while viewing and discus-sing a personal situation with a physician,” said Valorie Slizoski, certified social worker at BCHC. The setting for the telehealth appointments is a comfortable, private room located in the specialty clinic area at BCHC. Patients can take advantage of telehealth psychiatry services or learn more by contacting Valorie Slizoski at Boone County Health Center.
