EASY Consultation Program | About Us

EASY is a peer-to-peer consult program supporting primary care providers in providing mental health assessments and treatments in their practice settings. Our program offers peer-to-peer mental health phone and email consultation, educational and training sessions, and clinical tools for providers with adult and geriatric patients. Read more about our program and services below.

What can we help with?

Our team of psychiatrists and referral specialists can help answer general questions about adult and geriatric mental health and substance use concerns as well as help provide guidance and suggestions for specific cases.

This includes:

- Screening, diagnosing and treating common mental health conditions such as but not limited to mood disorders, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, addiction, ADHD and psychosis

- Evaluation and management of cognitive impairment and dementia

- Deprescribing of medications such as psychotropics, opioids and benzodiazepines

- Management of psychiatric medications in complex medical conditions such as cirrhosis, renal failure, transplant, oncology, TBI, Parkinson's, cardiovascular disease and HIV

- Approach to evaluation and medication management of mental health symptoms in complex syndromes such as ME/CFS, POTS and mast cell

- Evaluation and management of mental health symptoms and brain fog related to long COVID

- How to implement mental health screening into your primary care practice

- Assistance with finding community mental health resources

- Evaluation and management of substance use disorders in setting of other co-occurring mental health conditions, including questions regarding medication for addiction treatment (eg, naltrexone, Vivitrol, buprenorphine, etc. )

- Evaluation and management of mental health conditions in the setting of substance use

Services

We offer free peer-to-peer consultation to primary care providers caring for adult and geriatric patients with mental health concerns. Telephone and email consults are typically completed within 1 business day. Epic asynchronous e-consults are answered within 72 hrs.

How do our consults work?

Primary care providers can call our consult line at 1-888-910-0153 during business hours (M-F: 9am-5pm) to speak with our Resource and Referral Specialists or after hours may leave a message for call back the next business day. During business hours, an EASY psychiatrist will call you back within 1 business day. Together, we’ll determine the appropriate treatment and support options for your patient.

If needed, resources and referrals will be sent to you after your consultation call.

Please note that EASY Consultation is consultation service. You will continue managing care for your patient.

We offer learning services for medical providers throughout the year through a combination of written reference material, clinical toolskits, asynchronous learning modules and live educational sessions. If interested in having us provide a free educational session on a mental health topic of your choice, please email us at easyconsultation@cuanschutz.edu

A Care Coordinator will identify and provide resources and referrals tailored to the individual needs of each patient.

Our Team

Dr. Thant is a board-certified consultation-liaison psychiatrist at the

University of Colorado (CU), and is the Director of the Easy Consultation program and inpatient psychiatry consult service. She completed medical school at the University of Texas School in Houston, before moving to Colorado for both her psychiatry residency and fellowship. She is passionate about supporting other physicians and providers in the care of psychiatric patients, and helping people navigate the intersection between mental and physical health. Her other clinical and academic interests include cannabis and mental health, and comprehensive psychiatric care for medically and neurologically complex patients, including for those with long COVID, transplant needs/organ failure, TBI, movement disorders, adverse medication effects and chronic illness.

Dr. Watson is a board-certified adult and geriatric psychiatrist with over 20 years’ experience working in integrated models of care. This includes consultation to long-term care communities regionally and nationally, supporting nursing home systems and provider groups to deliver psychiatric care. Her passion is collaborating with primary care partners to optimize mental health in the service of whole-person care. She attended medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed a psychiatry residency and research fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. She completed a fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at Duke University.

Dr. Ritvo is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and addiction

psychiatry fellowship director at CU. She attended medical school and obtained her MPH from Emory University and completed her general psychiatry residency and addiction psychiatry fellowship at CU. Her growing interest in the safe prescribing and deprescribing of

prescription benzodiazepines led her to co-found the Benzodiazepine

Action Work Group and become medical director for the national nonprofit the Alliance for Benzodiazepines Best Practices. She has a passion for educating and supporting physician colleagues to implement safer use and tapering of benzodiazepines as well as evaluate and treat substance use disorders.

Dr. Sandra Fritsch trained in the Triple Board Program in pediatrics, psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry at Brown University. With this training and “being in the right place at the right time”, she had the privilege to work with pediatric primary care providers throughout her career; supporting the mental health care of youth in the primary care setting. She was in Massachusetts when MCPAP; the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program was developed and then started the Maine Child Psychiatry Access Program. Being the lead for CoPPCAP is an honor and an exciting opportunity. Dr. Sandra Fritsch has only been in Colorado for three years now and looks forward to supporting our pediatric primary care providers throughout the state.

Alexandra (Alex) Andrews serves as the Administrator for the Office of Colorado Mental Health Access Programs (CO-MAP), within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, Anschutz School of Medicine. CO-MAP includes three free state-wide mental health consultation programs. When Alex joined the Department of Psychiatry in March of 2024, she also accepted the role of Program Manager for the PROSPER and EASY programs, as well. Prior to these positions, she was the Director of Programs at 9Health Fair for eight years, where Alex supported the dissemination of healthcare services, new program development, and partnership cultivation to provide over 50,000 annual health screenings and direct services per year for Coloradans. Alex has also been a Health Care Advocate for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and a child abuse and neglect intake social worker. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Colorado State University and a Master of Arts in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University.

Resources

FAQs

Our program is open to any primary care provider with questions on how to address mental health and substance use concerns in adult and geriatric patients living in rural and underserved areas of Colorado. This can include patients you are caring for in the emergency room, urgent care, nursing home or correctional care setting.

A Resource and Referral Specialist will answer your call and work with you to gather more detailed information and reason for your call. Once that information is collected, it will be sent to our adult, addiction and geriatric psychiatric experts, who will generally outreach you the same day to schedule a phone call. Consults are generally completed within 1 business day.

If needed, resources and referrals will be sent to you after your consultation call.

Please note that EASY Consultation is consultation service. You will continue managing care for your patient.

Toolkits

el pomar foundation logo

El Pomar Foundation, Fiscal Sponsor

Tools & Resources

CU Campuses

CU Anschutz Medical Campus

Department of Psychiatry

School of Medicine

EASY Consultation Program | About Us

What can we help with?

Services

Our Team

Resources

FAQs

Toolkits

Psychiatry (SOM)

EASY Consultation Program | About Us

What can we help with?

Services

Our Team

Thida Thant, MD - Medical Director, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatrist

Lea C. Watson MD, MPH - Geriatric Psychiatrist

Alexis Ritvo MD, MPH - Addiction Psychiatrist

Sandra Fritsch, MD - CO-MAP Executive Director

Alexandra Andrews, BS, MA - CO-MAP Program Manager

Resources

Colorado Mental Health Access Programs (CO-MAP)

CO Perinatal Mental Health & Substance Use Consult Line (PROSPER)

Colorado Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation & Access Program (CoPPCAP)

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

Colorado Crisis Services

FAQs

Who can call the EASY line?

When is the EASY line available?

What does it cost to access EASY services?

How can my practice enroll with EASY?

Who will answer the phone when I call EASY?

How do our consults work?

What information should I have ready when I call the EASY Consultation program?

Toolkits

Long COVID Provider Toolkit

Long COVID Patient Toolkit

Chronic Illness Provider Toolkit

Benzodiazepine Toolkit

Psychiatry (SOM)