The first time I met one of my staff physicians on Internal Medicine, he told our team he had just one rule:
“Our team must contact the patient’s family physician during the admission, inform him or her of the situation and plan for appropriate patient follow up after discharge.”
If you talk to any hospital physician or family doctor, they would almost certainly agree that this type of integration between hospital and community is essential for reducing avoidable ER visits, readmissions and improving other key health outcomes. Put more simply, it’s just good care.
And so you would think contacting a patient’s family doctor during a hospital admission would be the standard of care – but it’s not. There’s no rule or expectation; rather, it’s just something nice to do.
I’m not here to criticize health care providers who do or don’t act a certain way. I’m sure there are many best practices which some providers do that others don’t, and vice versa.
That said, I don’t think we can deny the harsh truth: It’s no longer about knowing what needs to be done to provide higher quality of care at a lower cost. We know enough answers to begin implementing.
