Telephone consultations for review of asthma improve access

Conducting routine review by telephone rather than face to face in the doctor's surgery enables more patients with asthma to be reviewed. In the first UK trial to focus on the use of the telephone in the routine care of chronic disease, Pinnock and colleagues (p 477) compared telephone reviews with face to face consultations. As well as increasing the proportion of patients with asthma who were reviewed by 26%, telephone consultations were on average half as long as face to face consultations, and patients were just as satisfied with the telephone review, indicating that telephone consultations could be a good way to deliver routine asthma care.

(Credit: RICHARD GARDNER/REX)

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Relevant Article

Accessibility, acceptability, and effectiveness in primary care of routine telephone review of asthma: pragmatic, randomised controlled trial

Hilary Pinnock, Robert Bawden, Stephen Proctor, Stephanie Wolfe, Jane Scullion, David Price, and Aziz Sheikh
BMJ 2003 326: 477-479. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]