Practically, the levers are: prefer telepsychiatry, where median waits run weeks shorter¹; call promptly while motivation is high rather than “sometime this month”; and know, before you need it, which practices in your referral network can actually move. The last one is the difference between a referral that happens and one that evaporates.

Ascent Psychiatry was built specifically to close this gap. Referred clients speak with a dedicated Care Navigator who handles scheduling, paperwork, and records, and the first appointment — extended, unhurried, with a physician who has more than twenty years of experience — happens within a week. Statewide, via telehealth, anywhere in Pennsylvania. The moment your client says yes is the moment we are designed for.

Referring Is Simple

Have your client call (215) 876-5015 or email info@ascent-psychiatry.com and mention your name. Their Care Navigator takes it from there. If you would like to talk with Dr. Modan first — about a specific client or just to know who you are referring to — we are glad to set up a brief introduction call.

Sources

1. Sun CF, Correll CU, Trestman RL, et al. Low availability, long wait times, and high geographic disparity of psychiatric outpatient care in the US. General Hospital Psychiatry. 2023;84:12–17. Mystery-shopper study of 948 psychiatrists in five states: 18.5% available to see new patients; median wait 67.0 days in person vs. 43.0 days telepsychiatry; most frequent reason for unavailability was not taking new patients (53.9%).
2. AMN Healthcare / Merritt Hawkins. 2022 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicare and Medicaid Acceptance Rates. Average of 26.0 days to schedule a new-patient physician appointment across 1,034 physician offices in 15 major U.S. metro areas.
   Ascent Psychiatry provides personalized, accessible, compassionate psychiatric care across Pennsylvania, with first appointments within a week.

Self-report screeners and a strong clinical hunch are a starting point, not an answer. A thorough psychiatric evaluation takes the developmental history, rules out mimics — thyroid disease, sleep disorders, substance effects, trauma — and sequences treatment when both conditions are present. That sequencing is where expertise earns its keep: stimulants started in an untreated panic disorder can pour fuel on it, while SSRIs alone in an unrecognized ADHD picture treat half the problem and get half the credit.

This differential is the daily work of Dr. Modan’s practice. With fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry — where ADHD assessment is core curriculum — and more than twenty years of clinical experience across the lifespan, he evaluates the whole picture rather than the loudest symptom. Appointments are long enough to take a real history, because this particular question cannot be answered in fifteen minutes.

Have your client call (215) 876-5015 or email info@ascent-psychiatry.com and mention your name. Their Care Navigator takes it from there. If you would like to talk with Dr. Modan first — about a specific client or just to know who you are referring to — we are glad to set up a brief introduction call.

A psychiatrist who welcomes those questions is one you can work with. A practice that cannot answer them concretely is telling you, politely, that you will be coordinating by carrier pigeon. Given that only 18.5% of psychiatrists are reachable and available for new patients in the first place,² it is worth being selective about the ones who are.

Collaboration is built into Ascent’s model rather than bolted on. Every referred client has a dedicated Care Navigator who knows who referred them and keeps that channel open. With the client’s consent, you receive an update after the first visit — they were seen, here is the plan, here is how to reach us — and you hear about medication changes from us, not from your client’s best recollection. Dr. Modan’s appointments are longer by design, which means there is time to actually read what you send and incorporate it. Your client stays your client. We are the medication arm of a team you are already leading.

Referring Is Simple

Have your client call (215) 876-5015 or email info@ascent-psychiatry.com and mention your name. Their Care Navigator takes it from there. If you would like to talk with Dr. Modan first — about a specific client or just to know who you are referring to — we are glad to set up a brief introduction call.

Notice what the framing does: it credits the client’s effort first, names the observation without judgment, positions the evaluation as serving the shared goal, and ends with a small, reversible ask. One conversation. Not a diagnosis, not a prescription, not a new identity.

• “I think you need medication.” Too conclusive. It does the psychiatrist’s job in advance and gives the client a verdict to resist rather than a question to consider.
• “There’s nothing more I can do for you.” Even when meant humbly, this reads as abandonment — and makes the referral feel like a discharge.
• “It’s just a chemical imbalance.” Oversimplified, increasingly contested, and it strips the client of agency. You do not need a mechanism story to justify a consultation.

Handling the Common Objections

• “Medication will change who I am.” Acknowledge the fear, then reframe what change means: untreated symptoms are already changing who they get to be. The goal of treatment is more access to themselves, not less.
• “If I take medication, it means therapy didn’t work.” Point gently at the evidence: combined treatment outperforms either alone in the conditions you most often refer for.¹ Two tools beat one tool. Nobody concludes a carpenter failed because they picked up a second tool.
• “I’ll think about it.” Take yes for an answer — and reduce friction. This is where the practical barrier matters: nationally, the median wait for an in-person psychiatric appointment is 67 days, and fewer than one in five psychiatrists are taking new patients at all.³ A client who agrees in March and is seen in June often is not a client who is seen at all. If you refer to a practice that can move within a week, the window of willingness stays open.

How Ascent Helps the Conversation Land

When you refer to Ascent Psychiatry, the path you describe to your client is short and concrete: they call, a dedicated Care Navigator handles all the logistics, and their first appointment — an extended one, with a physician who has more than twenty years of experience — happens within a week. With your client’s consent, you hear back after the visit. The frame you offered in session — information, augmentation, team — turns out to be exactly how the process feels.

Referring Is Simple

Have your client call (215) 876-5015 or email info@ascent-psychiatry.com and mention your name. Their Care Navigator takes it from there. If you would like to talk with Dr. Modan first, about a specific client or just to know who you are referring to, we are glad to set up a brief introduction call.

Two points tend to land well. First, an evaluation is information, not a commitment — the client is agreeing to a conversation with a physician, nothing more. Second, the evidence supports the team approach. In the landmark NIMH MTA study of childhood ADHD, 68% of children receiving combined treatment were rated as successfully treated at the end of the 14-month trial, versus 34% with behavioral treatment alone.⁴ In anxiety disorders, the evidence varies by diagnosis, but when physiological arousal is high enough to block exposure-based work, reducing it pharmacologically is often what lets the therapy succeed. A referral is not a handoff. You remain the anchor of their care.

Every therapist in Pennsylvania has lived the frustrating version of this story: you make the referral, and your client joins a months-long queue. In a 2023 mystery-shopper study that called 948 psychiatrists posing as new patients, fewer than one in five were available to see a new patient, and the median wait for an in-person appointment was 67 days¹ — more than double the 26-day average for new-patient appointments across other medical specialties.² Momentum dies in that gap, and some clients never go at all.

If that has made you hesitant to refer at all, the bar you should hold a psychiatric practice to is simple:

• Fast access. A referral made at the moment of readiness should be seen within days, not months. Readiness is perishable.
• Real appointments. Long enough to take a genuine history — not a fifteen-minute medication check with a stranger.
• Communication back to you. With the client’s consent, you should know the patient was seen, what the plan is, and how to coordinate. You should never have to chase a psychiatrist for an update.
• Respect for the therapy. A psychiatrist who tells your client they can stop therapy because the medication is working does not understand the evidence — or your role.

How Ascent Works with Referring Therapists

Ascent Psychiatry was built around exactly these frustrations. When you refer a client to us, they speak with a dedicated Care Navigator who handles every piece of logistics — scheduling, paperwork, testing, follow-up — and their first appointment happens within a week. Appointments are longer by design, because people are much more than a diagnosis, and a treatment plan should be built around a person’s life, values, and priorities.

Dr. Modan brings more than twenty years of clinical experience, with fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Dartmouth and addiction psychiatry training at NYU. We treat children, adolescents, and adults across Pennsylvania via telehealth, with particular depth in ADHD and anxiety — the two presentations most likely to be sitting, partially hidden, in a therapy caseload.

And we close the loop. With your client’s consent, you will hear from us after the first visit: they were seen, here is the plan, here is how to reach us. Your client stays your client. We are simply the medication arm of a team you are already leading.

Referring Is Simple

Have your client call (215) 876-5015 or email info@ascent-psychiatry.com and mention your name. Their Care Navigator takes it from there. If you would like to talk with Dr. Modan first — about a specific client or just to know who you are referring to — we are glad to set up a brief introduction call.