Enhancing Care Through Collaboration: Contributions of an Interdisciplinary Consultation Liaison Model

Objectives: Hospitalized patients typically receive behavioral health services from consultation-liaison (CL) providers. This paper describes an interdisciplinary CL care model implemented across two pediatric academic hospitals within a single institution, an urban and smaller suburban hospital. The CL service includes psychosocial providers (psychologists and licensed clinical social workers), psychiatric providers (psychiatrists and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners), and behavior analysts. Methods: Admission and demographic data from 2024 were queried from the electronic medical record using Snowsight and SQL code; inpatient consult data were extracted from a data visualization dashboard in Qlik. Results: Patients ranged in age from newborn to 32.7 years (M = 14.6, SD = 3.9) and the majority were female ( n = 1235; 64.5%). CL psychosocial providers evaluated 69.5% of all patients and served as sole CL consultants for 53.6%. Adolescent medicine (49%) and general pediatrics (20%) were the hospital services most frequently requesting psychosocial consultations, with eating disorder assessment being the most common consult question (49%). Three patients who were seen by all three CL disciplines (psychosocial, psychiatry, behavior analysts) are described in a case series to illustrate the CL service's collaborative care approach. Conclusions: Overall, both descriptive quantitative data and the case series demonstrate that the CL service relies on collaboration among CL disciplines and partnership with hospital colleagues to provide high-quality care. Implications for Impact Statement This paper describes a CL service’s integrative approach to providing high-quality mental and behavioral health care to pediatric patients admitted to a medical hospital. One year of data and a case series involving three patients are presented to illustrate the CL team’s role within the hospital and its approach to collaborative care.