At Iris Telehealth, our top priority is ensuring quality care throughout each patient’s behavioral health journeys. To achieve this, we partner with healthcare organizations across the U.S., providing access to top-notch providers, quality behavioral health programming, and our medical leadership team.
This team, comprised of Dr. Thomas Milam, Dr. Tracy Mullare, LaDonna Chirpas, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, and Don C. Napier II, LISW-CP, promotes quality care, works closely with our provider team, and supports our partner clinics with their medical expertise.
We are excited to share a glimpse into the team’s goals, successes, their personal perspectives, and insights into our care philosophy.
Ensuring quality care is always priority number one
Each day, the medical leadership team works to promote high-quality behavioral health care, ensure we form partnerships built on quality, and recruit providers who deliver the best care possible.
Don C. Napier II, LISW-CP, Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, Iris Telehealth
The medical leadership team at Iris Telehealth is dedicated to enhancing the quality, accessibility, and integration of behavioral health services.
By prioritizing evidence-based patient-centered approaches, and innovative technologies, we aim to deliver superior mental health care and support continuous improvement in clinical outcomes.
Our collaborative efforts with broader healthcare systems and commitment to professional development reflect our focus on achieving the best possible health outcomes for the patients of our clinic partners.
An essential aspect of this team’s role is collaborating with our clinical hiring team, operations, and sales. While they work with many divisions within the organization, their goal is to align quality with productivity and financial metrics, and sales.
Dr. Thomas Milam, our Chief Medical Officer, says that his team works with others at Iris to help providers balance their time delivering care, documenting effectively, and communicating with teams.
No two days looks the same across the medical leadership team
According to our Medical Director of Outpatient Services, Dr. Tracy Mullare, every day hits on a different realm of what they do.
On any given day, our medical leadership team juggles:
- Administrative tasks
- Scoping clinical calls
- Provider interviews
- Ongoing quality initiatives
- Chart and peer reviews
- Provider and partner calls
However, Dr. Milam emphasizes they always put patient care issues first, noting, “We have to be able to flex to issues that arise when providers or partners have concerns about a patient encounter.”
He highlights the importance of flexibility and adaptability in this role as well.
“We have to address those fairly quickly and it means being flexible and having great abilities to move between meetings with different topics and to communicate effectively.”
Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, Don Napier, shares Iris Telehealth’s care philosophy
“At Iris Telehealth, our care philosophy is centered on delivering patient-focused, evidence-based, and integrated behavioral health services through accessible and flexible telehealth solutions.
We prioritize collaborative care, quality, and compassion in all our interactions, continuously striving to enhance our services and support early intervention and prevention in mental health.
Our approach ensures that each patient receives personalized, high-quality care that addresses their unique needs and contributes to their overall well-being.”
We aim to be good clinical and financial partners
The medical team maintains a longitudinal relationship between providers and partners. On the partner side, this team often sits on calls with potential partners to get to know them, learn more about their population, and determine what their ideal provider looks like.
LaDonna Chirpas, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, Director of Nurse Practitioner Services
The medical leadership team strives to ensure that Iris continues to form partnerships that are built on providing quality behavioral health care. We also must ensure that the Iris family of providers are top-notch to be able to deliver the best care possible.
Additionally, the medical leadership team attends partner calls to learn about any ongoing needs, like patient volumes, protocol, and generally review how things are going.
At Iris, the partner relationship is something that grows over time.
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer, Iris Telehealth
We want to be good clinical partners as well as good financial partners – we’re constantly thinking about what that means. Sometimes that must evolve in terms of operational things we may need to change or adjust to be a better partner to a provider who maybe feels like they need something more from us – guidance, leadership, pay, benefits. To partners that love what we do, and they want more.
With our Iris providers, the medical leadership team is with them from day one, going through interviews, and getting to know them and their preferences.
Dr. Mullare, shares, “It’s fun to meet providers at the beginning of their journeys with Iris, learn what they’re looking for, and let them know what to expect about the process.”
After placement, the team checks-in with them to ask about any concerns, issues, or questions. They also review where they’re going professionally and see how they’re doing personally, too.
A look at our medical team’s biggest successes
We asked the medical team about how they see their biggest successes here at Iris, and these were their answers:
“The partnership this year with Texas Health on THBHVV. This program has provided behavioral health services to many patients who did not have access before. Many of the Iris staff have done a lot of work to get the program up and running smoothly. We look forward to many more partnerships of this kind in the future.”
LaDonna Chirpas, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, Director of Nurse Practitioner Services
“The biggest success of the Iris Telehealth medical group is their pioneering role in integrating behavioral health services through telehealth, which has led to expanded access, high-quality care, and positive clinical outcomes.”
Don C. Napier II, LISW-CP, Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, Iris Telehealth
“I think about how we’ve been able to grow – that has been amazing. We’re not losing focus on what we do, which is providing quality care via telehealth. We continue to meet the increasing need, we’re being innovative, and we’re thinking about how to execute quality care. That’s the focus and drive, making sure patients are getting the care they need.”
Dr. Tracy Mullare, our Medical Director of Outpatient Services
“I would say having such gifted, experienced, and talented people in the medical group has enabled our company to grow faster because we can trust each other to do the work that we say we’re going to do in the divisions we oversee.
You have to trust your team in medicine and we have built trust here and created an environment where other divisions can trust us, too, and I’m most proud of that. I think that’s a real gift to have that as a medical group team.”
Dr. Thomas Milam, Chief Medical Officer, Iris Telehealth
Learn more about the Iris support pillars
If you’d like to learn how our medical team can help support your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out today by contacting us here.
Additionally, if you’d like to learn more about the other pillars of support our teams provide, check out our other spotlights here:
- Learn about Clinical Alignment Executives
- Meet our Practice Managers
- Get insights into the Medical Staff Services Teams
- Get to know our Clinical Hiring Team
- Understand how our IT team works with providers and partners
At Iris, we’re proud to provide quality support to all our partners so they can help their patient population get the quality behavioral health care they need.
