title: Study finds ways to boost care coordination between emergency and primary care providers.
abstract: A new report suggests that poor communication between emergency and primary care providers has had a negative impact on care, and that this interface requires significant improvement if the country is to move toward more cost-effective care delivery models that prioritize quality. There are no easy solutions to the problem, but some health care organizations are making strides by using alternative communications modalities and by finding ways to strengthen the relationships between emergency and primary care physicians. Health systems and affiliated PCPs who utilize electronic health records (EHR) are better able to coordinate care with each other, but EHRs are not a silver bullet to the problem. In addition to documenting care tasks in the medical record, scribes can fill in care-coordination gaps by making follow-up calls to PCPs or specialists, or sending pages where appropriate. Some health systems are seeking to address prob lematic handoffs between the ED and PCPs by developing protocols that include care-coordination steps for diagnoses that are associated with high ED utilization.
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D058007:Physicians, Primary Care