Provider-to-Provider Consultation Line (PPCL) is a no-cost provider-to-provider telephone consultation and education program to help pediatric and perinatal health care providers address their patients' behavioral and mental health needs. Mental health consultation has shown to be an effective approach to addressing mental health issues within clinical settings.

The Provider-to-Provider Consultation Line (PPCL), at the heart of the Louisiana Pediatric Mental Health Access Program (LaPMHCA), is a statewide, telehealth-driven initiative that enhances equitable access to coordinated clinical and support services for children and youth—particularly in rural and underserved communities. Anchored in a legacy of innovation by the Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health (BFH), which has pioneered mental health consultation models for decades, the PPCL empowers frontline pediatric providers—including pediatricians, nurse practitioners, family physicians, doulas, and physician assistants—to screen, diagnose, treat, and refer children and youth with behavioral health needs.

Through real-time expert consultation, training, and care coordination, the PPCL integrates behavioral health into pediatric practice, strengthens Medicaid EPSDT implementation, and connects providers statewide to specialist support and referral resources. This robust network builds on Louisiana’s nationally recognized milestones: from scaling the Nurse-Family Partnership and early integration of mental health into home visiting, to launching Project LAUNCH for early childhood, and developing dedicated perinatal and pediatric consultation services. In 2023, BFH unified these efforts under a single umbrella, enabling the PPCL to serve both pediatric and perinatal healthcare providers and advance preventive, developmental, and therapeutic behavioral health care for Louisiana’s families on a sustainable, systems-wide scale.

More Information about PPCL

Register for the Provider-to-Provider Consultation Line

LRHA's ROLE

The Louisiana Rural Health Association (LRHA) will support rural perinatal health care providers by helping to plan and promote a comprehensive training initiative that builds on the existing Provider-to-Provider Consultation Line Program.

LRHA will assist in developing and producing a detailed Impact Report that synthesizes consultation line data, program utilization, and stakeholder feedback, and that clearly describes program outcomes, successes, challenges, and recommendations in a format suitable to inform perinatal trainings. LRHA will also help coordinate with design and communications partners to ensure the report is professionally formatted, branded, accessible, and available in both digital and print-ready formats to support outreach in rural communities.

In addition, LRHA will collaborate with state and clinical partners to plan an intensive training program for rural prescribing obstetric providers that addresses perinatal mental health and substance use needs, including supporting needs assessment activities, curriculum development with subject matter experts and people with lived experience, and the creation of agendas, slide decks, case studies, handouts, and evaluation tools.

LRHA will further assist in developing a practical work plan for training delivery—such as scheduling, platform selection (in-person or virtual), registration processes, CEU/CME alignment, and promotion of services—so that rural providers can more easily access and benefit from these perinatal resources.

GEOGRAPHICAL REACH

The subject matter expert team will serve as the primary resource for developing the perinatal training curriculum for both the foundational and follow-up series of sessions, which will be designed for rural health providers and made available statewide. 

Julianna Finelli, MD is board certified in general psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry. Her academic and clinical interests focus on infant and early childhood mental health and perinatal psychiatry.

She is the former medical director for the Louisiana Mental Health Perinatal Partnership (LAMHPP).

She supervises residents, fellows, and medical students at the Tulane Infant Mental Health Services (TIMHS) at the Metropolitan Human Services District (MHSD).

Maegen S. Vincent, MDis a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Tulane.

Her academic and clinical interests include Reproductive and Perinatal Psychiatry as well as Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry.

She serves as a perinatal psychiatry consultant for the Louisiana Provider-to-Provider Consultation Line and provides direct clinical care at her private practice in New Orleans.