PHILADELPHIA — E-mail and fax are the preferred tools for pediatric hospitalists to use when communicating with referring physicians, according to the results of a small survey of 77 physicians.
In this survey of referring pediatricians and emergency physicians in the metropolitan Washington area, most preferred follow-up contact from pediatric hospitalists via fax (34%) or e-mail (30%), Dr. Riva Kamat-Nerikar reported at the annual meeting of the Eastern Society for Pediatric Research.
Dr. Kamat-Nerikar, a pediatric hospitalist at Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children in Falls Church, Va., and her colleagues contacted physicians in 38 pediatric practices and 10 emergency departments that referred patients to the pediatric hospitalist service at Inova. The hospitalist team there admits about 2,300 patients per year.
The initial survey contact was Web based. Those who did not respond via the Web were then contacted by fax. Those who did not respond via fax were then contacted by phone.
In all, 77 physicians responded; 74% were pediatric physicians.
Slightly more than half of the respondents were women (56%).
Dr. Kamat-Nerikar noted that almost half of the respondents graduated from medical school after 1990.
Most of the respondents (94%) said that communication from hospitalists was necessary to follow-up care. Ease, accuracy, and directness of the communication from hospitalists were important to the primary care and emergency department physicians, the authors reported.
The most important information in hospitalist communication was the diagnosis, the results of any consults, and laboratory/radiology results, the investigators observed.