Referral decisions differ between primary care physicians and specialists
Monday, September 19, 2011 - 10:31
in Health & Medicine
How do physicians decide which colleague to refer their patient to? It differs depending on whether you ask primary care or specialist physicians, according to research from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, USA, led by Michael Barnett. Primary care physicians are more likely to cite reasons relating to patient access or physician-to-physician communication whereas medical or surgical specialists cite reasons related to patient experience with the chosen physician. Barnett and colleagues' work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.