Communication Gaps Persist Between Primary Care and Specialist Physicians

A survey conducted with data from 2008 found that physicians often do not communicate with each other at the time of referral or after consultation. Communication between physicians might have improved since then, with the dissemination of electronic health records (EHRs), but this is not known. We used 2019 survey data to measure primary care physicians’ perceptions of communication at the time of referral and after consultation. We found that large gaps in communication persist. The similarity between these survey results suggests that despite the dissemination of EHRs, physicians still do not consistently communicate with each other about the patients they share.