Pilot Study Health System/Community Partnership for Enhanced Outreach to Prevent Suicide Attempts

The period after discharge from an emergency department (ED) is a critical time of increased risk for suicide and related behavior (SRB). Brief "caring contact" interventions that provide follow-up and support after a healthcare visit have been shown to reduce SRB and are now recommended best practices for suicide prevention in healthcare systems. However, system- and individual-level barriers to widespread implementation exist. For example, deployment of brief contact interventions requires dedicated resources and staffing within already overburdened healthcare settings, and even single-session interventions require robust provider training and ongoing oversight for successful implementation.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a recently developed Enhanced Outreach Intervention (EOI) for post-ED discharge that combines multiple evidence-based suicide prevention components (e.g., safety planning, risk assessment, caring contacts, and care engagement) and is delivered through a partnership between a healthcare system (Mass General Brigham [MGB]) and a local crisis line organization (Samaritans of Boston). Combining multiple evidence-based interventions has the potential to increase effectiveness over usual practices, and partnering with a community organization vastly increases scalability.

Samaritans staff will undergo robust, multifaceted training on the EOI, and use standardized decision trees to guide EOI delivery. In this trial, the investigators will develop operational workflows for using a suicide risk algorithm to identify patients to receive the EOI, conduct a small open pilot of the EOI (N = 20), and assess the barriers and facilitators, and feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity of implementing the EOI in an academic medical setting to inform intervention refinement.