Proactive consultation-liaison-services (CL): comparing PHQ-4 screening with traditional referral pathways in medical inpatients – a prospective comparative pilot study
Paul Köbler, Linda Wilfert, Alexander Dechêne, Eva K Krauß-Köstler, Christiane Waller, Barbara Stein · 2026
Read Proactive consultation-liaison-services (CL): comparing PHQ-4 screening with traditional referral pathways in medical inpatients – a prospective comparative pilot study by Paul Köbler, Linda Wilfert, Alexander Dechêne, Eva K Krauß-Köstler, Christiane Waller, Barbara Stein (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13274105.txt.
Description
Paul Köbler and co-authors present a 2026 pilot study on finding hidden mental illness in hospital medical wards. Many inpatients have depression or anxiety that staff miss when referrals depend only on a doctor's hunch. One ward instead screened every patient with the four-question PHQ-4 form, while two similar wards kept usual practice.
The screening ward logged 127 admissions against 267 on the usual-care wards. Referrals rose from about eight percent to about seventeen percent of admissions. Confirmed diagnoses were found in about nine percent of screened admissions versus three percent under usual care. Screening patients also reached a consultation faster, a median of one day instead of three and a half.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Paul Köbler, Linda Wilfert, Alexander Dechêne, Eva K Krauß-Köstler, Christiane Waller, Barbara Stein |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 46142 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |