Background: Warm handoffs have shown to improve engagement in care for integrated mental health services; however, in a clinic population with high degrees of socioeconomic disadvantage and multiple comorbid chronic conditions to be addressed, clinic appointments can be lengthy and often patients cannot stay for an additional appointment. The current work set out to understand if a brief introduction—a non-billable encounter where a psychology team member meets with the patient to describe services and schedule future appointment—improved attendance and engagement in care for patients who were unable to stay for a full warm handoff appointment in a primary care clinic.

Methods: Participants included 171 patients who were referred to an integrated psychology team within an academic internal medicine clinic at an urban hospital. Data was tracked from December 2023 until February 2024 following an educational didactic on the importance of warm handoffs. Team members were asked to notify the integrated psychology team when placing a referral to complete a warm handoff or brief introduction. Referrals, brief introductions, and attendance rates were pulled from the electronic medical record.

Results: 38.6% of patients referred to the integrated psychology team completed a brief introduction. 80.3% of patients who completed a brief introduction then went on to complete a visit with the integrated psychology team whereas 57.1% of those who were referred for an appointment without a brief introduction completed an appointment at the later date. There is a significant relationship between the brief introduction and attendance at a future appointment, such that completing a brief introduction significantly impacts the completion of an appointment with the integrated psychology team at a later date (McNemar’s test X2 =28.99, p < .01).

Discussion: Briefly meeting with psychology team member improves attendance at future visits with the integrated psychology team in a primary care clinic. Prior work from our team highlights barriers to utilizing warm handoffs and that a brief didactic on the benefits of warm handoffs increases use (DePascale et al., 2024). This work supports the emphasis on the warm handoff being a critical component of the primary care behavioral health model and extends the work to show that a brief non-billable encounter can improve engagement in needed psychological services in an integrated care setting with a diverse patient population.