TORRINGTON -- Change is happening at Community Health and Wellness Center of Greater Torrington, and Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said Monday he's working with both sides of the aisle to see it happen across the country.

Murphy, along with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and others in Congress are crafting a bipartisan bill to overhaul the way physicians address mental and behavioral health.

The bill, to be introduced this summer, would create incentives to integrate physical and mental health services, Murphy said during his visit to the Wellness Center.

This is not a new concept for Wellness Center administration. For more than two years, they have been working to treat "the whole patient," Chief Executive Officer Joanne Borduas said, in keeping with a national effort to bring the two services together.

"What that means is when you screen the patient, whether it's medical, OB-GYN, whatever the case may be, part of your intake should be, 'Do you have any mental health issues?'" Borduas said. "Because we recognized that it was such an untreated condition and there was such a need to accommodate that in the state and nationally."

Murphy's trip was one of several "fact finding" missions the senator has taken while drafting the bill, which aims to fix what some call a broken national health system.

Integrating behavioral health with primary care is a relatively new concept, Borduas said, and because of that some facilities don't house both services.

In some cases, this means referring a patient to another doctor and hoping they can make it to their appointment. For many Wellness Center patients, transportation is a challenge.

The Wellness Center's behavioral health division employs two full time licensed clinical social workers. It also partners with the McCall Foundation to treat substance abuse. McCall staffers work on the first floor alongside primary care doctors to foster integration, Borduas said.

"I kind of force it when I can," Borduas said. "It is just a lot easier for me to come down the hall and say, 'This patient really needs your help,' instead of making a referral and hoping they make it at some point."

The recent $8 million renovation and construction project at the facility, paid for by a combination of federal and state grants, was completed in October, yet many of the shining new exam rooms and office spaces in the 24,000 square-foot addition sit empty.

Borduas said the need and the funding for mental health services in Northwest Connecticut are both there, but the biggest obstacle the center faces is recruitment of qualified health care professionals. The two social workers and McCall staffers treat approximately 2,000 behavioral health patients, most of whom are referrals from the Wellness Center's primary care operations.

Finding licensed professionals has been difficult for many regional medical centers, Borduas said, but especially those looking for specialists and treating primarily Medicaid patients.

"This is the future of medicine, having physical health and mental health right next to each other, and this is exactly what the bill I'm working on is intended to incentivize," Murphy said. "It's good to know that parts of Connecticut are ready for the change we hope our bill is going to stimulate."