Initial Specialist Telephone Consultation With New Patients in Secondary Care

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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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.

Detailed Description
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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.

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

Conditions
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Respiratory Diseases

Intervention / Treatment
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* Other: telephone consultation
* Other: No intervention


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: All new adult general respiratory referrals from primary care Exclusion Criteria: Follow-up patients

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

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


Arms and Interventions

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

What is the study measuring?
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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 | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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outpatients