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GPs call on hospitals to inform them when a patient dies
West Australian GP Dr Amanda Villis hit a nerve when she recently called for hospitals to ensure GPs be informed when a patient had died while in hospital.
When a patient dies in hospital, their GP needs to know.
Dr Villis told
newsGP that the lack of communication can lead to a number of issues.
‘Sometimes I’ll have a patient come in and I’ve got no idea their partner just died in hospital. It’s hard when you feel like you’re the last to know,’ she said.
Dr Villis said if GPs were kept informed, they would be able to bring in social supports for the deceased patient’s family and friends, or at least make contact.
‘Let’s say someone had rung me to say a patient had passed away. I might think, okay, the partner of that patient has mental health issues or a difficult social situation. So I’ll have to get them in, or try to get extra supports to them,’ she said.
Dr Villis has called for a standard approach across all hospitals, ensuring a patient’s regular GP is informed.
‘Best practice would be an automated fax or notification rather than waiting for the discharge summary, and then someone from the treating team calling the next business day,’ she said.
‘GPs are often not on the radar – we’re not in the hospital so they don’t see us. But, actually, we want to know.
‘We care a lot about our patients and know them well. This isn’t an afterthought. We’d appreciate a phone call to say, “Sorry this person has died, here’s what happened”.
‘Often hospitals don’t know about the social setting and the patient’s family. We are in a much better position to manage that.’
A common situation is when GPs first find out about the death of a patient through the hospital discharge summary. But these, as
newsGP has
previously reported, are very often late.
Dr Villis said the situation is exacerbated after a patient dies, as the priority drops.
‘They can take a month or longer,’ she said
Melbourne GP Dr Paul Grinzi responded to Dr Villis on Twitter,
stating that there is ‘[n]othing worse than seeing a patient, asking how their partner (also a patient) is, only to find out the partner died during a recent admission you helped arrange.’
Dr Grinzi told
newsGP the issue needs to be solved.
‘It’s really important – we need to be told of the outcomes after a hospital admission in a timely manner,’ he said.
‘It’s a professional courtesy. The name at the end of the [hospital] bed isn’t the whole healthcare team. The team are those who have been treating the patient – and the GP is a crucial part, both before and after the hospital admission.’
Many Australian hospitals already have notification systems in place intended to inform GPs if one of their usual patients dies in hospital. The Royal Perth Hospital, for example, has the
GP Notify system designed to alert GPs to a patient’s admission, discharge or death.
But other hospitals lack such systems.
The call comes after Dr Kat McLean and her colleagues
publicly lobbied for a change in terminology from ‘discharge summary’ to ‘clinical handover’, to stress the importance of good clinical communication between hospital doctors and GPs.
Dr McLean told
newsGP that the issue is linked to the broader issue regarding discharge summaries and communication.
‘If we fixed the discharge summary problem it would go a huge way to fixing this,’ she said.
‘At the moment, discharge summaries can be delayed by weeks or months. So if you don’t receive [notification of a death] for months and you’re trying to recall the patient for an overdue Pap smear, for example, it has a domino effect.’
clinical handover communication continuity of care discharge summary hospitals
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