Electronic Consultations Between Primary Care Providers and Radiologists Improve Patient Care

According to ARRS’ American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), electronic consultation not only offered primary care providers (PCPs) easy access to expert opinions by radiologists, it promoted collaboration between physicians that improved patient care, including avoiding unnecessary imaging tests.

“The eConsult (Champlain BASE) electronic consultation platform was developed to provide a secure method for PCPs to ask a specialist patient-specific questions supported by relevant clinical information,” explained first author Daniel Walker at the University of Ottawa.

Of the 20,678 eConsults completed through the service to all participating specialists from September 2012 to January 2017, 307 (1.48%) were sent to radiologists–classified by subspecialty (neuroradiology, thoracic, abdominal, musculoskeletal, or pediatric radiology), question type (workup, surveillance, education, specialist referral query, discharge, or other), anatomy, and pathology.