[Communication between the primary care physician, hospital staff and the patient during hospitalization]

HospitaL admission is a crisis for the patient and his family and can interfere with the continuity of care. It may lead to mistakes due to communication problems between the primary care physician and the hospital medical staff.

To explore the communication between the primary care physician, the hospital medical staff, the patient and his family during hospitalization.

A total of 269 questionnaires were sent to all Clalit Health Services-South District, primary care physicians; 119 of these questionnaires (44.2%) were completed.

Half of the primary care physicians thought that they should, always or almost always, have contact with the admitting ward in cases of internal medicine, oncology, surgery or pediatric admissions. However, the actual contact rate, according to their report, was only in a third of the cases. A telephone contact was more common than an actual visit of the patient in the ward. Computer communication between the hospital physicians and the primary care physicians is still insufficiently developed, although 96.6% of the primary care physicians check, with the aid of computer software, for information on their hospitalized patients. The main reasons to visit the hospitalized patient were severe medical conditions or uncertainty about the diagnosis; 79% of the physicians thought that visiting their patients strengthened the level of trust between them and their patients. There are sometimes communication difficulties and barriers between the primary care physicians and the ward's physicians due to partial information delivery and rejection from the hospital physicians. The main barriers for visiting admitted patients were workload and lack of pre-allocated time on the work schedule. No statistically significant differences were found between communication variables and primary care physician's personal and demographic characteristics.

The communication between the primary care physician and the hospital physicians should be improved through mutual workshops promoting communication channels conducted by the academic institutes and health maintenance organizations and the Ministry of Health.