Carol L. Alter, MD

Clinical Biography

Carol L. Alter, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist in the UT Health Austin Bipolar Disorder Center. She specializes in consultation-liaison psychiatry, also referred to as psychosomatic medicine, which focuses on the care of patients with comorbid psychiatric and general medical conditions. Additionally, Dr. Alter is a professor and serves as the Associate Chair for Clinical Integration and Operations for the Dell Medical School Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Dr. Alter earned both her bachelor’s degree in zoology and her medical degree from The George Washington University. She completed an internship in psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science and a residency in psychiatry at New York Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine, where she completed additional training at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Alter has experience working in diverse settings, including academia, research, administration, healthcare innovation and healthcare delivery with a focus on psychiatric care of patients with medical illness. She previously served as the System Lead for Behavioral Health at Baylor Scott and White, where she was responsible for the development of behavioral health services, including the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), which will be available to over 2 million primary care patients. Her additional past professional experiences include serving as the Chief Medical Officer of Mindoula Health, Inc., the first national provider of technology-enabled CoCM. During her time at Georgetown University, she led the Department of Psychiatry’s Center for Policy and Community Outreach, where she partnered with regional community clinics to widely implement CoCM in free and government funded clinics. She has been an active leader in mental health policy, working with the AIMS (Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions) Center, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the Kennedy Forum to facilitate reimbursement for CoCM and access to other mental health services. Her work focusing on delivery of effective behavioral health services in primary care settings has expanded to include a focus on value-based delivery models. She is the Chair of the APA Council on Quality Care and leads efforts with national employers and health policy makers to ensure that measurement-based care is delivered across all behavioral health services. She also serves as a Senior Fellow for Medical Integration at the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute.