Home | Provider Resources | About Us | Contact Us | Search

En Español

Timely Access to Behavioral Health Appointments

UPMC Health Plan Behavioral Health Services works to make sure that members get behavioral health appointments in a timely manner and that they have quick access to UPMC Health Plan Behavioral Health Services by telephone.

We adopted access standards for behavioral health appointments that meet or exceed state and national guidelines.  UPMC for Life members are expected to have:

• Appointments for routine behavioral health services within seven calendar days.
• Services for urgent needs within 24 hours.
• Non-life threatening emergency services within one hour.  A non-life threatening emergency is an emergency where if the member does not have a behavioral health appointment within one hour, he/she may deteriorate to the point of hospitalization. 
• Immediate emergency services in life threatening situations.

In 2007, behavioral health practitioners met the appointment standards for urgent, non-life threatening emergent and emergency situations 100% of the time based on calls made to UPMC Health Plan Behavioral Health Services. 

Access to routine behavioral health appointments is also measured by two questions on the annual satisfaction survey.  For the 2007 survey, 92.0% of UPMC for Life members reported that they usually or always got a routine appointment as soon as they wanted.  54.0% of UPMC for Life members reported getting an appointment within seven calendar days from the time they called to schedule an appointment for routine care. 

Ways we encourage timely access to behavioral health appointments include:

• Publishing access standards on a semi-annual basis in the Provider Newsletter.
• Posting articles about access on both the provider and member sections of our website.
• Care management staff are always available to assist members in scheduling appointments, including three-way calls with the member and provider.
• Care Managers make follow-up calls to members who had called in with an urgent situation to ensure appointments were kept.

To serve our members better, we also measure how quickly we answer the telephone and what percentage of callers hang up before their calls are answered.  UPMC Health Plan Behavioral Health Services exceeded our goals for both of these measures in 2007, and we continually try to improve our telephone responsiveness.

If you have trouble scheduling appointments soon enough to meet your needs or want behavioral health referral assistance, please call 1-888-251-0083.  TTY users can call 1-877-877-3580.   

< Back to All Articles