For psychiatric services, wait for the beep
Thursday, February 26, 2009 - 09:36
in Health & Medicine
Two-thirds of patients referred for psychiatric services following an emergency room visit are likely to reach only an answering machine when they call for help, compared to about 20 percent of patients calling medical clinics with physical symptoms. Only 10 percent of all calls to mental health clinics in nine U.S. cities resulted in an appointment scheduled within two weeks, according to a new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study published in Annals of Emergency Medicine...