Telephone Triage Study

University Hospital Basel

Status: Completed

Conditions: Any Medical Condition Presented by Patient

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00222001

MS-001-2002

Details and patient eligibility

About

The advance of communication technology has changed medical practice. The concept of medical telemedicine centers receiving, assessing and managing calls from patients or their carers on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis is spreading in the US as well as in European countries. Usually specially trained nurses using dedicated decision support software provide the service. One aspect is the so-called triage, i.e. the decision on urgency and optimal treatment path of a stated medical problem, which has the potential to contain overall treatment costs.

Despite proliferation of these services, little is known about the quality of the services provided.

In October 2000 the first 24-hour medical telemedicine centre staffed by medical doctors started operating in Switzerland. The aims of this study are to assess the quality of service provided by doctors using decision support software and to determine potential predictors of incorrect triage.

Enrollment: 100 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adult
• Insured with HMO Basel
• Patient of HMO practise Sternengasse
• First call to Medgate for a given medical problem
• Call is a telephone triage
• Informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• none

Trial design

100 participants in 1 patient group

HMO Patients

Description:

Measurement of telephone triage outcome.