title: Telepsychiatry for Inpatient Consultations at a Separate Campus of an Academic Medical Center.
abstract: Many hospitals do not have regular access to psychiatry consult services. This is well understood as a common shortage at nonacademic community hospitals (especially in rural environments, and may also be a problem at noncontiguously located smaller hospitals that are affiliated with academic medical centers in urban settings. The authors sought to deliver timely inpatient psychiatric consultation-liaison services via telemedicine to a local but physically separated hospital affiliated with an academic medical center.
  
  
  
  The authors collaborated with an office dedicated to the advancement of telemedicine technology at their academic medical center. They developed a telemedicine-based care model to deliver inpatient consultation-liaison psychiatry consultations to an affiliated (but physically separate) small academic hospital that did not have its own on-site consultation-liaison psychiatry team.
  
  
  
  The authors were able to successfully complete 30 consultations, each within 24 h. Only 1 patient was ultimately unwilling to participate in the telemedicine interview. As consultations were accomplished on same day as request, patient length of stay was unaffected.
  
  
  
  This pilot study suggests that telemedicine is a viable model for inpatient consultation-liaison psychiatry services to hospitals without on-site psychiatry resources and represents a viable alternative model of service delivery.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: DeVido
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Glezer
authors.affiliation: 2 Telehealth Resource Center, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Branagan
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
authors.forename: Alvin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Bourgeois
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000458:organization & administration*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000458:organization & administration*; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000458:organization & administration*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: consultation-liaison psychiatry; inpatient psychiatry consultations; telepsychiatry