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Dr Lukejohn Day and colleagues from California, USA assessed the completeness of gastrointestinal inpatient consultations at an academic teaching hospital.
The research team conducted a prospective, cross-sectional study of 278 inpatient gastrointestinal consultation requests evaluated from 2005 to 2007.
A questionnaire assessing multiple aspects of the requesting health-care providers' knowledge and documentation of patient information was completed by first-year gastrointestinal fellows.
Completeness of the consultation was evaluated by the gastrointestinal consultation attending physician.
The researchers found the most frequent consultation requests pertained to patients with gastrointestinal hemorrhage, and were made by first-year residents.
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| In 17% of consultations, pertinent information could not be located |
| American Journal of Gastroenterology |
In 15% of requests, health-care providers lacked basic knowledge about the patients for whom consultations were sought.
Conversely, in 17% of consultations, pertinent information could not be located in patients' paper medical chart/electronic medical record.
The strongest predictors for a complete consultation were requesters' knowledge of patients' past medical history, documentation of patients' current illness, and presence of the providers' admission note in the paper medical chart.
Consultations requested between 5PM and 10PM were assessed to be more complete.
More incomplete consultations occurred in the first 3 months of the academic year.
Dr Day's team concluded, “In 16% of inpatient gastrointestinal consultation requests analyzed, crucial patient data were missing or were unknown by the requesting provider.”
“Several aspects of requesting providers' knowledge and documentation of patient information were strongly associated with completeness of inpatient gastrointestinal consultations.”
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