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For Outside Providers: Working With CAPS

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UCSC Student Referrals

Every year, Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) at UC Santa Cruz refers hundreds of students off campus for therapy, psychological testing, and psychiatric care. Student presenting concerns range in severity from developmental and adjustment issues to serious mental health concerns and suicidality. Our main goal is to connect students with the best mental health services that the campus and the community have to offer.

CAPS may refer a student off campus for a variety of reasons:

  • The student's needs would be best met with open-ended therapy (CAPS operates using a brief therapy model; for individual counseling, we typically can meet with students for just up to a handful of times in an academic year).
  • The student has completed a round of brief therapy at CAPS and needs or wishes to continue with additional therapy.
  • Due to high demand, the wait time for an intake appointment at CAPS is too long to meet the student's needs.
  • The student needs a service CAPS does not provide (e.g., in-depth psychological testing, EMDR, mandated therapy when a student has broken UCSC policy or has judicial/legal problems).
  • The student prefers open-ended therapy or off-campus services for personal reasons or wishes to meet with a therapist with personal identities that CAPS therapists don't have.

Becoming Eligible for Referrals

Eligible off-campus providers are licensed clincians and agencies providing therapy, testing, psychotropic medication services, or related mental health treatment in the local area. If you would like to be added to our off-campus referral database, please fill out our downloadable Off-Campus Provider Questionnaire and email it to the CAPS Integrative Behavioral Health Supervisor, Jenner Rosgen, L.M.F.T., at jrosgen@ucsc.edu.  Alternatively, you may mail it to Jenner Rosgen, L.M.F.T., CAPS, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064.

In becoming eligible for receiving referrals from CAPS, we request that you get back to students we refer to you within two business days to let them know if you have openings and discuss their needs. If the demographic, insurance, or clinical information regarding your practice changes, please inform CAPS and the students you are seeing.  You may inform CAPS by emailing the changes to Jenner Rosgen at jrosgen@ucsc.edu.

Collaborating With CAPS

If you wish to collaborate or consult with CAPS regarding a new referral (e.g., to get treatment history), please have the student complete our Release of Information Form, and fax it to CAPS at (831) 459-5116 or mail it to UCSC CAPS, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, to the attention of the clinician who referred the student to you or c/o Case Management. Note that confidentiality prevents us from discussing client cases without a release.

You are also welcome to call our Central Office at (831) 459-2628 during business hours (Mon–Fri, 8 a.m.–5 p.m., all year round) if you have questions about resources available to UCSC students or campus procedures with which clients may need your help, such as documentation of a psychological disability to receive academic accomodations through the Disability Resource Center. If a student in your care needs such services, CAPS can advise you on the process but expects you, as the student's treating clinician, to provide the appropriate documentation.

Crisis Management/Emergencies

When a UCSC student becomes your client, you agree to provide all crisis stabilization services, including evaluation for and initiation of psychiatric hospitalization and post-hospitalization stabilization. It is not appropriate to refer a student in your care back to CAPS for crisis evaluation or stabilization or for crisis psychiatric care—our crisis screenings are meant to serve students who are not currently being seen by a mental health clinician or are current CAPS clients in crisis. Your crisis plan for UCSC students should be the same as that for any other client in your care.

If a student you are seeing is having a psychiatric emergency, please call 911 or the Crisis Stabilization Program at (831) 600-2800.

Increase the Likelihood of Receiving Referrals

Once a month, CAPS emails the off-campus providers in our referral database a short survey through Survey Monkey so you can give us information regarding your next available appointment and the number of openings you have available.  Please take five minutes to fill out this survey when you receive it to help us keep your availability information up to date. We are more likely to refer students to clinicians who inform us they have current openings. You are also welcome to inform us if you are running a group or offering a workshop that may be of interest to and appropriate for UCSC students.

Psychiatry Referrals

If you wish to refer your student client for off-campus psychiatry services, you don't need to go through CAPS. However, if the student has the UC SHIP insurance plan, you will need to instruct the student to contact CAPS to get a UC SHIP insurance form to give to the psychiatrist. UCSC students with UC SHIP insurance can obtain a referral form by calling CAPS during business hours (Mon–Fri, 8 a.m.–5 p.m.). The CAPS staff can create this form and print it for the student; students can also print the form themselves once CAPS has created it from within their Health e-Messenger secure messaging portal under "Referrals."

If you wish to refer a student for on-campus psychiatric services at CAPS, please fill out our downloadable Psychiatry Referral Form and our Release of Information Form and fax them to psychiatric case manager Christine Merriman, L.C.S.W., at (831) 459-5116 or mail them to Christine Merriman, L.C.S.W., UCSC CAPS, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.  CAPS Psychiatry will likely be in touch with you if the student is given an appointment.  Making a referral does not guarantee that the student will be accepted as a psychiatry patient at CAPS; in some cases, we may determine that a student would be better served by an off-campus psychiatrist or other services.

Student Health Insurance

Please check with any student you are seeing to find out what insurance they have (if any) and verify that the student understands and agrees to any copay or other out-of-pocket cost per session, as well as how you handle receipt of payment. It is best to do this before a first appointment to avoid any misunderstandings between you and the client and to ensure that you receive payment for your services.

The health insurance offered to undergraduate and graduate students by UCSC is the University of California Student Health Insurance Plan (UC SHIP) through Anthem Blue Cross. Approximately 60 percent of UCSC students have this insurance plan; others have various other insurance plans, including private insurance plans and Medi-Cal. Although UCSC students are expected to have insurance, a few do not. Note that students with UC SHIP must bring you a referral form generated by CAPS; this form allows you to bill UC SHIP for your services. Students who have forgotten to obtain this form need to call the CAPS Central Office (Student Health Center, East Wing, 2nd floor; 831-459-2628) during business hours (Mon–Fri, 8 a.m.–5 p.m.) to request this form from our front office staff. Once the SHIP referral form is created for a student, the student can print it from within their Health e-Messenger secure messaging portal under "Referrals." Also note that the UC SHIP referral form expires after 90 days of creation if the student has not used it. UC SHIP referral forms must be renewed at the end of the summer (usually around the third week of September) each year, so if you are continuing to see a student with UC SHIP, they will need to contact CAPS during business hours at the end of summer/start of fall quarter to request a renewed SHIP UC referral form to present to you.

If you are not an in-network Anthem Blue Cross provider but would like to be one or have questions regarding becoming a provider, please visit the Anthem Blue Cross website or contact them at (800) 888-2108. If you are already an Anthem Blue Cross provider and have questions related to claims, payment, processing, or other issues, you may contact their In-Network Provider Customer Services Department at (800) 677-6669 (phone) or (800) 258-3081 (fax).

CAPS does not take insurance and is not affiliated with Anthem Blue Cross.

Contact Information

If you have questions, please contact CAPS Integrative Behavioral Health Supervisor Jenner Rosgen at (831) 459-2895 or jrosgen@ucsc.edu or call the main CAPS office at (831) 459-2628. Thank you for your interest in working with UCSC students.