The value of consultation-liaison interventions to the general hospital.

Changes in health care funding have greatly enhanced the value of consultation-liaison services to their parent hospitals. This paper reviews representative studies showing that consultation-liaison interventions improve patient care, enhance patients' satisfaction with treatment, and reduce polypharmacy, adverse drug reactions, and subsequent hospitalizations. Reductions in costs of hospitalization realized by consultation-liaison interventions are also described, including average reductions in hospital stays of one to one and a half days, upgrades in diagnosis-related group (DRG) codes, and timely patient transfers to inpatient medical-psychiatric units or inpatient psychiatric facilities. These data suggest that consultation-liaison services will become increasingly important over the next few years.