Introduction: Residents in a large academic neurosurgery service see a high volume of new admissions and consults from the emergency room and referring services. Patients consulted upon and/or admitted in hospital settings often are lost to follow-up care in the outpatient setting. A simple intervention was introduced at our institution to improve follow-up rates.

Methods: A pre-existing inpatient email signout system was enhanced by including outpatient staff to input all patient traffic into the outpatient electronic medical record system. The main outcome measure was incidence of follow up from pre-intervention cohort and post intervention cohort.

Results: The retrospective cohort study revealed that post intervention, follow up rates improved. In 2012, of patients requiring follow up, %55 returned compared to the 2013 post-intervention cohort which demonstrated a %68 follow-up rate.

Conclusions: The simplicity of the design and methods in the study should not overshadow the significance of the results, which point to improved continuity of care. More studies are warranted to address this common problem endemic to any medical practice.

Patient Care: This research highlights a very common problem endemic to neurosurgical practices across the country, which can be remedied with simple measures such as the one our practice employed.

Learning Objectives: By the conclusion of the session, partcipants should be able to 1) identify a common problem affecting neurosurgical and medical practices 2) Describe a simple intervention which improves continuity of care

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