Psychiatric consultations in short-term general hospitals.

We investigated the use of psychiatric consultations in short-term general hospitals using a national sample of 327 hospitals and examining the hospital experience of approximately 263,000 patients discharged from these hospitals. We found that the demographic characteristics of patients receiving psychiatric consultations in the national sample were roughly similar to those reported for patients receiving consultations in earlier, single-hospital studies. Rates of consultation were considerably lower, however: 0.9%, compared with a median rate of 3.3% reported in the literature. We also found that patients receiving psychiatric consultations used more hospital resources than other patients.