New Chief of Behavioral Health at LCHC

Lynn Community Health Center is pleased to announce that Carlos Cappas, will become its new Chief Behavioral Health Officer on Monday, September 9.

A strong advocate for the integration of primary care and behavioral health services, Dr. Cappas’ career has focused on addressing the clinical, administrative and operational barriers to fully integrated care.

Dr. Cappas’ has held clinical and administrative leadership roles at two Federally Qualified Community Health Centers in Massachusetts where he witnessed both the successes of collaborative care as well as the clinical and operational barriers that can make care difficult. Ultimately, this is what led him to seek out more administrative roles to complement his clinical expertise and to focus on strategies that address the complex behavioral and social issues that impact care, particularly for underserved communities.

Dr. Cappas most recently worked at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he was responsible for the implementation of quality improvement activities, operational training, and clinical integration for 12 pediatric primary care practices. Before that, he served at the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership (MBHP) where he provided administrative and operational consultation to a large network of primary care practices interested in building integrated behavioral health services.

“At Lynn Community Health Center,” he said, “I look forward to building relationships with patients, clinicians, staff and community partners in order to collaboratively work towards deepening the integration of primary care and behavioral health services, while providing quality of care in a fiscally sustainable and patient-centered manner.”

“Dr. Cappas’ wealth of experience in policy, primary care/behavioral health integration, performance improvement and interdisciplinary leadership will serve the Lynn Community Health Center well,” said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, CEO.  “He is the behavioral health leader we need as we tackle the challenge of a new MassHealth payment model, and new ways for funders and payors to evaluate the quality of our work.

Dr. Cappas is a native of Puerto Rico and received his doctoral degree from Ponce Health Sciences University and completed at two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Clinical Health Psychology in Primary Care at UMass Medical School. He also holds an MBA in Healthcare Management from UMass Boston.