Current practices for mental health follow-up after psychiatric emergency department/psychiatric emergency service visits: a national survey of academic emergency departments.

OBJECTIVE: The objective was to describe continuity of care approaches for psychiatric emergencies in the emergency department.

METHODS: A national survey of all 138 academic emergency departments in the United States was conducted.

RESULTS: Most emergency physicians (81%) had no systematic method for identifying psychiatric emergency patients with high recidivism. In order to promote outpatient care, sites commonly reported using intensive interventions, including scheduling outpatient appointments prior to discharge (72%) and in-house case management (64%).

CONCLUSION: While systematic identification of repeat psychiatric emergency patients was uncommon, emergency departments reported using a variety of fairly intensive strategies to promote continuity of care with outpatient mental health services.