You asked if physicians are required to talk with each other when more than one is treating a patient, for example in the case of a bypass procedure.

No state law, as best as we can determine, requires physicians to confer or consult with each other when they are treating the same patient. The patient may have some recourse or available options under the law to encourage such dialogue between his physicians. By law, a copy of the patient's health record must be furnished to another provider upon the patient's written request. The patient is responsible for the costs of providing the information and must specify the name of the provider who is to receive the record. Such information includes x-rays, and copies of laboratory reports, prescriptions, and other technical information used in assessing the patient's condition. (Conn. General Statutes § 20-7d)

Under general legal principles concerning the patient-physician relationship, a physician has a duty to advise his patient to consult a specialist or someone qualified in a method of treatment that the physician is not qualified to give. This duty arises when the physician knows, or should know, that he does not possess the requisite skill, knowledge, or facilities to treat the patient's ailment properly, or that the method by which he is treating the patient's ailment is not providing relief or effecting a cure. (61 Am Jur 2d, Physicians and Surgeons, Sec. 214).

General legal principles also consider it the physician's duty, after his actual personal service is completed, to give the patient proper instructions regarding the future treatment of his ailment. The duty of an attending physician or surgeon to use reasonable care for the safety and well-being of his patient also includes the duty to warn and instruct those having the care of the patient, if they are ignorant or inexperienced, as to the duties they are to perform, or where the act to be performed involves a technical or medical matter (61 Am Jur 2d, Sec. 226).

Finally, another approach to the question presented is consideration of new type of physician known as the `hospitalist. " A hospitalist is a physician who stands in for a patient's personal physician when the patient is hospitalized, focusing on inpatient rather than outpatient care. A typical hospitalist will supervise a patient's care from admission to the hospital to discharge, when care reverts to the patient's personal physician. The hospitalist concept is not new (for example, critical care physicians limit their practice to inpatients), but a hospital-based generalist physician is a new role.

JK: ro