Rationale, aims and objectives: The aim of this paper is to examine the issue of telephone reporting by consultants in the medical community, which is rarely used in medicine today.
Methods: The paper reviews principal publications addressing this field that have shown that communication between consultants and primary care physicians has many shortcomings, frequently leaving the primary care physician with unanswered questions.
Discussion and conclusions: We present the value of routine telephone reporting by consultants to their primary care counterparts and also discuss possible future implications of communication via electronic mail.