It all just clicks: Development of an inpatient E-consult program

Abstract

Although the use of electronic consultations (e-consults) in the outpatient setting is commonplace, there is little evidence of their use in the inpatient setting. Often, the only choice hospitalists have is between requesting a time-consuming in-person consultation or requesting an informal, undocumented “curbside” consultation. For a new, remote hospital in our healthcare system, we developed an e-consult protocol that can be used to address simple consultation questions. In the first year of the program, 143 e-consults occurred; the top 5 consultants were infectious disease, hematology, endocrinology, nephrology, and cardiology. Over the first 4 months, no safety issues were identified in chart review audits; to date, no safety issues have been identified through the hospital’s incident reporting system. In surveys, hospitalists were universally pleased with the quality of e-consult recommendations, though only 43% of consultants agreed. With appropriate care for patient selection, e-consults can be used to safely and efficiently provide subspecialty expertise to a remote inpatient site.