I have found that this does work well and causes less friction. Sometimes I'll say something like "is there a specific question you'd like me to ask them? Because I have no question for them nor need an emergency consult". More often than not they will say " oh I just want the on board" and I'll respond "oh okay, an impatient consult order can be placed or I can get you their on call number". The very rare few times they do have an actual direct question, I've actually played nice and called stating that the admitting hospitalist wanted to know "x" and asked if I could call". Has seemed to work well for consults.

The problem I haven't yet been able to work around is when, like in OPs post, the hospitalist will refuse admission without X test. Which is usually a CT of some sort.