If you have had a chronic illness for a while, you have probably been in the hospital at least once. Usually, going to the hospital helps them make the right diagnosis or for you recover more quickly from a flare up with an illness such as diabetes or asthma. Have you ever wondered whether information on you was passed on to your primary care doctor after you got out of the hospital? You hope that everything learned about you was given to your doctor. Don’t hold your breath: there are often deficits in passing along information from hospital doctors to your primary care doctor. A recent study reviewed data on the exchange of information following discharge from a hospital. It found that communication between hospital physicians and primary care physicians did not occur all that much (between 3 and 20 percent of the time). Having a discharge summary at the first discharge visit was low and remained poor at 4 weeks. These failings affected the quality of care in approximately 25% of follow-up visits and led to primary care physician unhappiness.

Deficits in communication and information transfer at hospital discharge are common and may affect the care you receive. It was suggested that computer summaries and standardized formats may help make more timely transfer of patient information to primary care physicians, as well as make discharge summaries more available during later care. This is all well and good; like you, we all hope information transfer improves between physicians and, in turn, comes to help you. You may ask, however: “What can I do to make sure that what they learned about me in the hospital was passed along to my primary care doctor?” Being proactive about your illness is part of self-management. The next time you visit your doctor after being in the hospital, ask him or her whether a report was received from the hospital doctors. It is not only your right to know, but to make sure the hospital passed along information that may help your primary doctor treat you better. It is the best case for everyone looking out for your health, including yourself.

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