Assuring safety and efficacy of nurse triage for electronic consultation to improve access to specialty care

This 2021 editorial discusses how to ensure nurse-led triage of e-consult requests is safe and effective as a way to improve patients’ access to specialty care. You can access the article here.

This 2022 cluster-randomized trial in a Los Angeles safety-net system tested whether giving specialists e-consult feedback benchmarked against top-performing peers improved their e-consult response quality. You can access the article here.

This article discusses integrating e-consults into care delivery as a practical way to expand patients’ access to specialty care. You can access the article here.

This case-study article describes an e-consult dermatology program launched at 5 school-based health centers within a Connecticut FQHC serving 106,000 medically underserved patients across more than 150 school-based sites, illustrating through a patient case example how the store-and-forward e-consult model helps close pediatric dermatology access gaps for underserved students. You can access the article here.

This 2021 pediatric e-consult study at a community health center found that e-consults handled 23% of post-implementation referrals, avoiding an in-person visit in 53% of cases. You can access the article here.

This 2020 study evaluated an e-consult program aimed at improving access to endocrinologists for medically underserved populations, specifically assessing its impact on Medicaid patients’ access to endocrinology care. You can access the article here.

This 2023 study analyzed a year’s worth of e-consults at a multi-site Texas health center, examining content and quality of the e-consults, plus chart reviews of a subsample to see whether primary care providers actually implemented specialists’ recommendations within 90 days, supplemented by interviews with providers about their ability and willingness to follow through on … Read more

This 2022 study by Anderson et al. evaluated the impact of e-consults across four specialties—cardiology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, and endocrinology—implemented in a large, multi-site federally qualified health center, assessing whether the program improved access to specialty care for uninsured patients in rural/central Texas. You can access the article here.

This study is a cross-sectional analysis of 450 nephrology e-consults from one health system (2020–2023) in a setting where all specialty care requests are initiated via e-consult, aiming to characterize consultation patterns amid a stagnant nephrology workforce and rising chronic kidney disease prevalence in order to identify ways to better support referring clinicians. You can … Read more

This 2025 study (Kim et al., American Journal of Managed Care) examines e-consult adoption, identifying the facilitators and barriers to state Medicaid programs investing in and reimbursing e-consult services. You can access the article here.

This study by Chu et al. (BMC Primary Care, 2024) is a qualitative interview study with primary care providers across three health systems that explored barriers and facilitators to a proactive e-consult program designed to help nephrologists give timely, evidence-based guidance to primary care providers managing diabetic kidney disease. You can access the article here.