Assessing the impact of psychological intervention on family practice clinic visits

The effects of brief psychological intervention on rates of medical utilization were investigated in a family practice clinic. Patients referred to the psychology service served as experimental subjects. These subjects underwent psychological assessment and treatment from supervised clinical psychology externs in joint working arrangements with family practice residents. Control subjects were other family practice patients, matching the experimental group in age, sex, and race. The number of medical visits to the family practice clinic, specialty clinics, and the emergency room were the dependent measures. The study period was two years. Results indicated that the experimental subjects were more likely than control subjects to decrease medical utilization of the family practice clinic. The findings are consistent with earlier work showing an association between brief psychosocial intervention and decreases in the frequency of clinic visits. However, this study suggests that preinternship-level clinical psychology trainees can be equally as effective in providing this intervention as mental health professionals who have completed their training.