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  • Telephone consultations for general practice: A systematic review

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    Author(s)
    Downes, Martin J
    Mervin, Merehau C
    Byrnes, Joshua M
    Scuffham, Paul A
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Scuffham, Paul A.
    Byrnes, Joshua M.
    Downes, Martin J.
    Year published
    2017
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    Background: The use of information technology, including internet- and telephone-based resources, is becoming an alternative and supporting method of providing many forms of services in a healthcare and health management setting. Telephone consultations provide a promising alternative and supporting service for face-to-face general practice care. The aim of this review is to utilize a systematic review to collate evidence on the use of telephone consultation as an alternative to face-to-face general practice visits. Methods: A systematic search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library, and the International Clinical Trials ...
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    Background: The use of information technology, including internet- and telephone-based resources, is becoming an alternative and supporting method of providing many forms of services in a healthcare and health management setting. Telephone consultations provide a promising alternative and supporting service for face-to-face general practice care. The aim of this review is to utilize a systematic review to collate evidence on the use of telephone consultation as an alternative to face-to-face general practice visits. Methods: A systematic search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library, and the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform was performed using the search terms for the intervention (telephone consultation) and the comparator (general practice). Systematic reviews and randomized control trials that examined telephone consultation compared to normal face-to-face consultation in general practice were included in this review. Papers were reviewed, assessed for quality (Cochrane Collaboration’s ‘Risk of bias’ tool) and data extracted and analysed. Results: Two systematic reviews and one RCT were identified and included in the analysis. The RCT (N = 388) was of patients requesting same-day appointments from two general practices and patients were randomized to a same-day face-to-face appointment or a telephone call back consultation. There was a reduction in the time spent on consultations in the telephone group (1.5 min (0.6 to 2.4)) and patients in the telephone arm had 0. 2 (0 to 0.3) more follow-up consultations than the face-to-face group. One systematic review focused on telephone consultation and triage on healthcare use, and included one RCT and one other observational study that examined telephone consultations. The other systematic review focused on patient access and included one RCT and four observational studies that examined telephone consultations. Both systematic reviews provided narrative interpretations of the evidence and concluded that telephone consultations provided an appropriate alternative to telephone consultations and reduced practice work load. Conclusion: There is a lack of high level evidence for telephone consultations in a GP setting; however, current evidence suggests that telephone consultations as an alternative to face-to-face general practice consultations offers an appropriate option in certain settings.
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    Journal Title
    Systematic Reviews
    Volume
    6
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-017-0529-0
    Copyright Statement
    © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
    Note
    Page numbers are not for citation purposes. Instead, this article has the unique article number of 128.
    Subject
    Health economics
    Biomedical and clinical sciences
    Health sciences
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/347435
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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