Psychiatric consultations in a southern university hospital

BACKGROUND: Differences in psychiatric referral rates among demographic groups of general hospital patients between 1995 and 1998 in a southern university setting were studied. The contribution of suicide attempts to referral rates was assessed. METHODS: The study was done by analysis of hospital admission and psychiatric consultation data. RESULTS: Psychiatric consultations were done in 844 (2%) of 41,681 admissions. Among patients without suicide attempts, those between ages 30 and 59, whites, and internal medicine admissions had higher referral rates. Age, race, and admitting service were independently associated with psychiatric referral rates. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support previous research showing that psychiatric referral depends on a variety of factors that may be patient-related, disease-related, and/or physician-related. Physicians' motivations to refer or not, organizational barriers or facilitators, disease-related, and/or patient-related factors (eg, age and race) need to be assessed further as determinants for requesting psychiatric consultation.