“What We’ve Got Here is a Failure to Communicate”
I know. It was the best line from Cool Hand Luke. A Center for Studying Health System Change study found that:
While more than 69% of primary-care physicians said they always or mostly passed on a patient’s history and reason for a consultation to the consulting specialist, fewer than 35% of specialists reported always or mostly receiving that information.
And that pattern cuts both ways: 81% of specialists said that of course, they always or usually send consult results back to the referring primary-care doctor, but only 62% of those doctors said they got that info.
Doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
Electronic medical records are supposed to alleviate this problem. But HIPAA, networking costs and incompatible hardware (not to mention nobody wants to pay for the software) are making adoption a slow process.
When you stop to think about it, this is all kind of scary.