Information Transfer Practices Between Hospitals and Primary Care for Older Adults: A Scoping Review

Objectives To identify the current and suggested practices of information transfer from hospitals to primary care physicians (PCPs) for older adults. Design Scoping review of the academic literature. Setting and Participants Older adults (≥65 years) discharged from the inpatient unit or the emergency department to their PCPs and health care professionals caring for these older adults in the hospital and outpatient settings. Methods Four databases were searched to identify studies published after 2000 that discussed information transfer between hospitals and PCPs for older adults. We adopted evaluation research and implementation science approaches, extracting the means of information transfer, whether information was sent or received, and barriers and facilitators. Results We identified 51 articles that discussed information transfer practice; only 15 primarily focused on information transfer, without any consensus on best practices. Fax was the most common method for transferring information, electronic health record usage increased over time, and pharmacists most often sent information. Most studies did not report whether information was sent or received. Conclusions and Implications This review highlighted a paucity of research and a lack of consensus in the area, a mismatch between existing information transfer practices and technological capacities, suboptimal utilization of health care resources and staffing, and a limited use of evaluation research and implementation sciences to explore this topic. Given the importance of information transfer, particularly for older adults who undergo complex hospital admissions and frequent transitions, further research on this topic is warranted. Further research should focus on implementing new practices and assessing their efficacy.