ATLANTA, March 12 -- Faulty communication between hospital-based and primary-care physicians may disrupt proper care of a quarter of patients when they are discharged, according to a review of the literature.
The primary tool for communicating details of a patient's hospital stay and required follow up treatment, the discharge summary, is not available to as many as nearly half of primary care physicians within the required 30 days, said Sunil Kripalani, M.D., M.Sc, of Emory University here.
In fact, the discharge summary fails to materialize at all in about 25% of cases, Dr. Kripalani and colleagues determined from a meta analysis.
Even when the summary does show up, it often lacks important information, such as diagnostic test results, discharge medications, or a follow-up plan, the investigators said in the Feb. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
