Connecting Adolescents in Primary Care to Mental Health Supports

To address the low rate of treatment uptake for mental health problems in adolescents, an interdisciplinary clinical team implemented and evaluated two quality improvement (QI) innovations in an academic adolescent primary care clinic. The first innovation was a referral order created in the electronic health record that could be sent by any clinician identifying teen mental health concerns. These referrals were collected weekly by a clinic-affiliated social worker, who used the second innovation, a new follow-up protocol, to connect patients to social work or mental health providers.

Four QI measures were tracked over 2 to 3 years (depending on measure). The rate of referred patients scheduling a first mental health appointment was steady a…