Title: | Telephone Triage as an Alternative to Face-to-Face Contact in General Practice |
Project Description: | A recent innovation in general practice involves all patients requesting a face-to-face consultation being asked to speak to a doctor on the phone first (telephone triage). Management support for this innovation is being offered by two commercial companies and reported gains include the ability to deal with two thirds of requests on the phone, greatly reduced waiting times for appointments, improved continuity of care, improved patient experience and reduced A&E attendance and emergency admissions.
Funded by the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Health Services & Delivery Research Programme, members of HSR together with RAND Europe, who come together under the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, are conducting an independent evaluation of the schemes using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data collection. Some questions the study will examine include: * How does a GP telephone triage approach affect patient experience and the use of primary and secondary care services? If the findings support this approach to telephone triage, our work will show how the approach could be rolled out more generally, what the potential barriers would be, and how they might be overcome. |
Project organisation | |
Start date: | 1st April 2015 |
End date: | 31st March 2017 |
Contact person: | Dr Ed Wilson |
Contact Details: | Primary Care Unit Institute of Public Health University Forvie Site, Robinson Way Cambridge Cambs CB2 0SR UK Telephone: tba Fax: 01223 762515 E-mail: ed.wilson@medschl.cam.ac.uk |
Funding information | |
Funding Organisation: | NIHR HSDR |
Funding Reference: | |
Funding Amount: | £740,967 |
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Further Information, References and Publications | |