Dr Charles Fishman – Clinical Background
2011 –
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hawai’i John A. Burns School of Medicine.
2002 to 2005
Clinical Director for Maori Mental Health Waitemata DHB (District Health Board).
2000 –
Medical Director for Behavioral Healthcare at Health Partners, a physical health Medicaid and Medicare HMO with 150,000 members. Dr. Fishman was responsible for integrating the care between primary care physicians and behavioral healthcare providers. He also oversaw population-based initiatives in areas such as the care of depression in the physical health care network and improving prescribing patterns to children.
Senior Consultant at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. Dr Fishman designed a program for severely emotionally disturbed youngsters.
1996 – 1999
Founding Medical Director and Senior Psychiatric Consultant for Community Behavioral Health, a managed care company that is part of the Philadelphia Health Department and provides behavioral managed care to over 450,000 Medicaid recipients.
1994
Awarded Annie Casey Fellowship. Dr Fishman received extensive leadership training from the Wagner School. He also worked at the Massachusetts Dept. of Mental Health and served as the program coordinator to develop a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Foundation replication grant. The goal was to provide services to the hundred highest need youngsters in the Boston area.
In Massachusetts, Dr. Fishman initiated a Family Integration program which led to the development, by families and providers, of an evaluation instrument, which is used to compare the degree that facilities incorporate family participation in their programs.
Dr. Fishman, in conjunction with Joan Mikula, Commissioner of Children’s Mental Health, produced a documentary video tape of three high need children. These children, in the course of their care, cost the State $1,000,000 in three years. The goal was to demonstrate the need for community-based alternatives.
1989
Established the Institute for the Family in New Jersey, a clinic training professionals, and providing community based mental health services to children and their families and direct services to adults and children with substance abuse problems. During that period, Dr. Fishman conceptualised and clinically directed a program called Community Structural Therapy, which linked a family therapist with an indigenous person from the community. Dr. Fishman also was President of the Center for the Family, a program that provided innovative treatment of severe eating disorder patients.
1986 – 1990
Medical Director of Diversified Health Services. Dr Fishman established an innovative, family therapy based adolescent inpatient unit at York (PA) General Hospital.
Dr Fishman has also served as both Director of Training and Distinguished Senior Trainer at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. In those roles he oversaw a large training program which included child psychiatry, psychology, social work, as well as an extern program which trained clinicians in family therapy in the USA and abroad.
Dr. Fishman graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1972 and carried out his post-graduate medical training at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine and the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. He was board certified in general psychiatry in 1975 and child psychiatry in 1976.
Next: NZEDS Services