Patient counseling across neurologic subspecialties-a single academic center study

Background and objectives: Counseling is a routine part of neurologic care, but little is known about how commonly it is documented. We sought to characterize counseling in routine neurologic care by determining the proportion of visits with documented counseling, describe forms of counseling, and investigate factors that predict documentation of counseling.

Materials and methods

We performed a cross-sectional study via retrospective chart reviews of 994 neurologic subspeciality outpatient encounters at a tertiary academic medical center from September 2023 to October 2023. The main outcome of this analysis was documented counseling (Yes/No) which was established via protocol-driven pre-specified chart review with assessment of abstraction reliability. Secondary outcomes included lifestyle modification (e.g., exercise, sleep, diet, alcohol, safety) and medication/disease specific education counseling (e.g., headache, seizure, medication, cognitive, stroke). We used a multivariable generalized estimating equations regression model with clustering at the provider level to compare how patient counseling varied across provider subspecialities.