Information transfer between hospitals and general practice: problems and solutions
The study by Kripalani et al. (JAMA Vol. 297:pp. 831-841) is an excellent systematic review about communications between hospitals and primary healthcare providers in different countries. And the results are quite alarming.
General practitioners (GPs) express a general dissatisfaction with the lines of communication between hospitals and practice. It seems that information transfer from hospital to GPs after patient discharge is rather slow, if not completely neglected, at the expense of the patients’ follow-up care. In many cases, reports are untimely and incomplete, and relevant clinical information, including diagnostic test results and change of medications, are often missing. No data is available about the safety repercussions of this communication deficit but the study reports that 25% of follow-up care visits are adversely affected.
In the US, it does not help that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) guidelines give hospitals 30 days to come up with discharge summaries. This one-month time frame is simply too long and not quite patient-oriented.
The use of information technology can be an important tool in solving this communication problem but hardware and software standardization needs to be tackled first before computer-generated discharge reports can be routinely available.
No Comments
Be the first to comment!