Neurobehavioral Health: Psychiatry Consult and Liaison Service

The Hoag psychiatry liaison service supports the various multidisciplinary medical teams throughout the hospital with on-sight consultation and the psychiatric resources necessary to enhance identification and intervention of neurobehavioral disorders. The psychiatric liaison service improves care, as well as patient and physician satisfaction by attending to the often complex neurobehavioral elements of a patient’s presenting medical problem. The Hoag psychiatry liaison service has increased value in the continuum of hospital care by lowering the costs associatedwith Emergency Department visits, shortening lengths of hospital stay and focusing on decreasingre-admissions.

Renee Garcia, M.D. leads Hoag’s Consult and Liaison Services. Dr. Garcia is board certified in Psychiatry with a subspecialty in psychosomatic medicine. Dr. Garcia completed her medical education at Loma Linda University, School of Medicine where she first fell in love with her medical specialty, psychiatry. She then went on to complete general psychiatry residency training program at University of Southern California. During her time at USC, she developed professional interests in emergency room (ER) psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, which is working with patients that have complex medical and psychiatric illnesses. She chose to further her expertise in working directly with the medically ill and serving as a consultant to other medical disciplines in an acute care setting, so then transitioned to Stanford University where she completed her psychosomatic medicine fellowship. She remains adjunct faculty at Stanford on the psychosomatic medicine service and is now further developing Hoag’s psychiatry consult service to both the medical center and emergency room as the new director.