Background
Dr. Johnston is Medical Director of MIND at Home, a program that provides pro-active care coordination to persons with memory disorders at home. MIND at Home was tested in two large-scale federally funded studies and shown to improve outcomes for persons with dementia and their caregivers in the community. She is also Medical Director of the PATCH Program (Psychogeriatric Assessment and Treatment in City Housing) which provides outreach mental health services to low-income seniors in Baltimore City. Dr Johnston was an early telemedicine user at Johns Hopkins. She introduced mobile telehealth to both the PATCH program, to increase access to care for frail seniors in the community, and in MIND at Home, to provide support to Memory Care Coordinators and family caregivers in participants' homes.
In 2008, the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry created the AAGP Deirdre Johnston Award for Excellence and Innovation in Geriatric Mental Health Outreach Services, to encourage programs providing mental health services to the frail elderly in their homes.
Previousl, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Dr Johnston was the inaugural Director of the Kate Mills Snider Geriatric Psychiatry Outreach Program (the GO Program), an innovative model of collaborative in-home mental health care for the frail elderly. The GO Program and the Deirdre Johnston award were made possible by generous gifts from the Snider family of Salisbury NC and New York, in honor of their mother, Kate Mills Snider, in gratitude for Dr. Johnston's care of Mrs. Snider.
Dr. Johnston holds specialty qualifications in psychiatry in the UK and in Canada as well as in the United States and is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the subspecialty of Geriatric Psychiatry