In past installments of our newsletter, we’ve discussed the many positive outcomes we’re observing in the children who participate in therapy. Another important metric of success is how involved you, as community partners, are in our program.
We have several data points regarding community engagement that we regularly share with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA, the funding agency for Project CONTACT). These include how many partners view our newsletters and provide comments and feedback – so thank you for all that. We also report on the trainings and presentations we do for our community partners. So as a reminder, please note that we are able to talk to you and your staff about the importance and benefits of trauma-informed care. And probably most important, we report the number of referrals we receive from our community partners.
This month, we want to highlight a mechanism that a handful of our community partners are taking advantage of: our Patient Portal based referral system. Currently we have six separate community partner agencies who we’ve set up in our Patient Portal. We provide them a number of referral forms and whenever they’re ready, they simply sign into the portal, complete the brief form, and submit it. We immediately receive notification and begin reaching out to the family to set up their first appointment. So far, we’ve processed over twenty referrals into the program using this procedure. It’s a quick and easy way to make a referral and it speeds the process of getting families into treatment. If you are interested in obtaining a portal account, please contact Joel Epstein.