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Primary, behavioral care phone interventions lead to follow-up appointments

Brief phone calls between caregivers and primary care on-site behavioral health providers often resulted in appointments being scheduled, according to recently published data.

“Providing this type of adjunctive service may result in earlier access to care and efficiently assigning responsibilities to the appropriate team member,” the researchers wrote.

To assess the efficacy of on-site behavioral health providers in primary care practices providing brief phone consultations related to behavioral-health concerns in children, researchers analyzed available data from 57 phone calls to patient caregivers from an on-site psychologist.

Almost 75% of the phone calls made were in regards to boys, and the mean age of patients was 7.4 years.

Results demonstrated that 79% of calls resulted in a conversation with the caregiver. The average length of calls was 13 minutes, according to the study.

Overall, caregivers expressed concerns over externalizing problems (56%), internalizing problems (37%) and activities of daily living (28%).

Most of the phone calls resulted in the scheduling of an appointment with the behavioral health provider (56%), and 75% of those who scheduled an appointment showed up for their session. 

Fourteen percent of calls resulted in the behavioral therapist giving specific recommendations, but no appointment was scheduled by the caregiver.

The researchers noted that future studies will need to address whether these interventions lead to an increase in office attendance, association between initial call concern and call outcomes, as well as rates of success with recommendations given by the behavioral health provider via phone call.

“This service was provided to address concerns related to medical care staff returning calls that involved content outside of their expertise and were often an inefficient use of time. [Behavioral health] providers are specifically trained to handle a wide variety of concerns, and while past research has established the value of integrated [primary care], the value of an adjunct phone service is still emerging,” the researchers wrote.

Disclosures: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.