Initial Specialist Telephone Consultation With New Patients in Secondary Care

Telephone Consultations for New Patients Being Referred to a Specialist Respiratory Outpatient Clinic

Consultations with patients by hospital consultants are organised today in a manner which is barely dissimilar from that offered 30 or 40 years ago. Whilst some attempts to improve this process, such as Choose and Book, shorter waiting times and patients' receiving a copy of the correspondence sent to their general practitioner (GP) have improved the situation, there has been little radical change and little thought given to the patient experience.

The investigators wish to investigate whether patients' experience of attending respiratory outpatient clinics can be improved by a pre-clinic telephone call with a specialist thereby reducing the number of attendances at the hospital for appointments and investigations and improving overall patient satisfaction.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Respiratory Diseases
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: telephone consultation; Other: No intervention

Detailed Description

This study will investigate whether taking a new patient's history over the telephone permits better selection and arrangement of investigations prior to or synchronous with the first face to face consultation, with the potential to reduce the number of visits the patient has to make to the hospital.

Patients will be offered an initial telephone consultation by post and may opt-in or out of the study. Those having a telephone consultation would have this booked for a specific time and date and the patient would be sent an appropriate information leaflet regarding this. After the telephone consultation patients receive a summary of the consultation and details of any investigations and appointments booked by the research nurse. Patients who did not respond to the initial invitation letter within seven days or who declined to participate would be sent a routine appointment. All patients would asked to complete the MISS-21 questionnaire.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 157
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United Kingdom
  • London, United Kingdom, W6 8RF
    • Imperial College at Charing Cross campus

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• All new adult general respiratory referrals from primary care

Exclusion Criteria:

• Follow-up patients

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Other: Agree to the alternative study invitation; Agree with alternative of telephone consultation (instead of face to face) offered as an initial consultation to new referrals	Other: telephone consultation; alternative to face to face consultation for new referrals
Other: Decline the alternative study invitation; Decline, no respond to the alternative of telephone consultation	Other: No intervention; no alternative to face to face consultation
Other: Comparator; Choose and book	Other: No intervention; no alternative to face to face consultation

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Patient Satisfaction of the Alternative Consultation	Patient Satisfaction assessed by MISS scale, Medical interview satisfaction score. The score 0-7, 0 means dissatisfaction, higher scores indicate higher satisfaction.	First clinic appointment (Month 0) and Follow-up appointment (6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of Required Investigations	reduction in number of required investigations	0-6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Imperial College London
• Collaborators: The Dunhill Medical Trust
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Professor MR Partridge, MD FRCP, Imperial College London

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): June 1, 2009
• Primary Completion (Actual): April 1, 2010
• Study Completion (Actual): April 1, 2010

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 30, 2009
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 30, 2009
• First Posted (Estimate): October 1, 2009

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 25, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 23, 2019
• Last Verified: October 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: outpatients
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Respiration Disorders; Respiratory Tract Diseases
• Other Study ID Numbers: NHLICX07Q060519

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No