internists, there is a tremendous amount you can do for your patients before you need to call in subspecialists, or send your patients out and parcel their care out to other physicians. and that helps you to build trust, and that makes it a bit easier on the patients. they only have to come to one place, see one doctor. but when the needs arise to get them elsewhere, initially, it is handled the same way. a phone call is made from my nurse, my social worker, my medical assistant to the patient, to the site where they may have an appointment. gary feinberg: quite often i will see a patient that's been referred to me by another doctor. i'll have a pulmonologist-- a lung doctor-- who will send me a patient who has asthma, and the pulmonologist wants me to assess whether or not the sinuses are causing the asthma problem. and after assessing the patient, getting the radiological studies, and determining that there's sinus disease, then i call the pulmonologist, and i call him on the phone or i call her on the phone and say we have this problem. the patient's going to need surgery... the patient will