Nurse telephone consultation for out-of-hours primary care can save money through reduced ER admissions, surgery attendance and GP home visits

Background: The entry points to Danish acute care are the out-of-hours health care services (OOH) and emergency medical services (EMS). Where EMS is organized in a similar manner throughout Denmark, the OOH is not. Four regions (including the North Denmark Region) have a general practitioner operated service (OOH-GP), whereas the Capital Region of Copenhagen, (Copenhagen) Denmark has the Medical Helpline 1813, (OOH-1813) which is staffed by nurses and physicians. Nationally, access to out-of-hours healthcare and emergency departments requires referral by one of the healthcare services. The OOH services in the North Denmark Region and Copenhagen handle similar patients and health problems; however, no published research has compared the type of actions performed in response to patient calls. We investigated and compared the type of triage response given by OOH-GP and OOH-1813 to patient contacts in the study period and the proportion of subsequent hospitalization. Methods: Observational cohort study of patients contacting OOH-GP and OOH-1813 from January 24th to February 9th, 2017. Patients with valid personal identification numbers were included. Primary outcomes were action performed by the call-handler i.e. telephone consultation, face-to-face consultation, home visit and hospitalization within 24 hours. Hospitalization was defined as a hospital stay of ≥24 hours. Results: We included 32,489 contacts (OOH-GP: 21,149 and OOH-1813: 11,340 (representative sample)). Calls to the OOH-GP were handled as follows: 67.2% (n=14,214) telephone consultation only, 32.8% (n=6,935) face-to-face consultations including 1,089 home visits (5.1%). In comparison, at OOH-1813, 51% (n=5,763) were handled by telephone consultation only, 49% (n=5,575) were triaged to face-to-face consultation including 38 home visits (0.44%). The differences in triage were statistically significant (p<0.05). Subsequent admissions occurred after 524 (4.6%) OOH-1813 contacts and 798 (3.8%) OOH-GP contacts (OR = 1.22 (1.01;1.27)). Conclusions: This comparison of OOH-1813 and OOH-GP shows significant differences in the triage responses, among these, notably more face-to-face consultations at OOH-1813. Subsequent hospitalizations were comparable with a small, but statistically significant, overrepresentation among the OOH-1813 cohort. These results could be due to the differences in organizational structure of the OOH or demographics in the two regions (capital vs city-rural), however further research is needed to determine this.

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Point-of-care blood tests during home visits by out-of-hours primary care clinicians; a mixed methods evaluation of a service improvement

BMJ Open ◽

10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033428 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. e033428

Author(s):

Gail Hayward ◽

Sharon Dixon ◽

Sophie Garland ◽

Margaret Glogowska ◽

Helen Hunt ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Primary Care ◽

Mixed Methods ◽

Point Of Care ◽

Home Visits ◽

Total Carbon ◽

Secondary Outcome ◽

Service Improvement ◽

Team Approach ◽

Out Of Hours ◽

Blood Tests

ObjectivesWe aimed to evaluate test usage and patient and clinician experience following the introduction of point-of-care (POC) blood tests into a primary care out-of-hours service.DesignA mixed methods service evaluation comprising quantitative records of the clinical contexts of tests taken and qualitative interviews with clinicians. Research permissions and governance were obtained for patient interviews.SettingOut-of-hours primary care.ParticipantsAll patients requiring home visits from the service during the implementation period.InterventionsThe i-STAT POC blood test platform was introduced to two bases providing home visits for a period of 8 months. Venous blood samples were used and two cartridges were available. The CHEM8 cartridge measures sodium, potassium, chloride, total carbon dioxide (TCO2), anion gap, ionised calcium, glucose, urea, creatinine, haematocrit and haemoglobin. The CG4 cartridge measures lactate, pH, PaO2 and PCO2, TCO2, bicarbonate, base excess and oxygen saturation.Primary and secondary outcome measuresThe proportion of home visits where tests were taken, the clinical contexts of those tests, the extent to which clinicians felt the tests had influenced their decisions, time taken to perform the test and problems encountered. Clinician and patient experiences of using POC tests.Resultsi-STAT POC tests were infrequently used, with successful tests taken at just 47 contacts over 8 months of implementation. The patients interviewed felt that testing had been beneficial for their care. Clinician interviews suggested barriers to POC tests, including practical challenges, concerns about time, doubt over whether they would improve clinical decision making and concern about increased medicolegal risk. Suggestions for improving adoption included sharing learning, adopting a whole team approach and developing protocols for usage.ConclusionsPOC tests were not successfully adopted by an out-of-hours home visiting service in Oxfordshire. While some clinicians felt they could not add value, in other cases they resulted in improved patient experience. Adoption could be promoted by improving technical, team and education factors.

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