Trial reportThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2002
Telephone consultations to manage requests for same-day appointments: a randomised controlled trial in two practices.
Trial report in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
57 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 107 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of telehealth care on escalation to emergency care: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of telemedicine and telecare · 2025Pooled it
- Impact of Remote Consultations on Antibiotic Prescribing in Primary Health Care: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Effectiveness of Acute Care Remote Triage Systems: a Systematic Review.Journal of general internal medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Telephone consultations for general practice: a systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2017Pooled it
- Effectiveness of organizational interventions to reduce emergency department utilization: a systematic review.PloS one · 2012Pooled it
- The effects of telephone consultation and triage on healthcare use and patient satisfaction: a systematic review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2005Pooled it
- Systematic review of recent innovations in service provision to improve access to primary care.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2004Pooled it
- Telephone triage systems in UK general practice: analysis of consultation duration during the index day in a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2016Trial
- Exploring demographic and lifestyle associations with patient experience following telephone triage by a primary care doctor or nurse: secondary analyses from a cluster randomised controlled trial.BMJ quality & safety · 2015Trial
- Implementing telephone triage in general practice: a process evaluation of a cluster randomised controlled trial.BMC family practice · 2015Trial
- Trial
- Cost-effectiveness of telephone or surgery asthma reviews: economic analysis of a randomised controlled trial.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2005Trial
- Accessibility, acceptability, and effectiveness in primary care of routine telephone review of asthma: pragmatic, randomised controlled trial.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2003Trial
- Telephone consultations may not save time.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2002Trial
- Uses of Virtual Care in Primary Care: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Access systems in general practice: a systematic scoping review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2024Article
- Incidence of remote consultation on general practitioners' antibiotic prescriptions in 2021: a French observational study.BJGP open · 2024Article
- Video versus telephone for telehealth delivery: a cross-sectional study of Australian general practice trainees.Family practice · 2024Article
- Patient Characteristics Associated With Phone and Video Visits at a Tele-Urgent Care Center During the Initial COVID-19 Response: Cross-Sectional Study.Online journal of public health informatics · 2024Article
- General practice trainees' telehealth use during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study.Family practice · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGeneral practitioners (GPs) in the United Kingdom have recently begun to adopt the use of telephone consultation during daytime surgery as a means of managing demand, particularly requests for same-day appointments. However, it is not known whether the strategy actually reduces GP workload.
aimTo investigate how the use of telephone consultations impacts on the management of requests for same-day appointments, on resource use, indicators of clinical care, and patient perceptions of consultations. DESIGN OF STUDY: Randomised controlled trial.
settingAll patients (n = 388) seeking same-day appointments in each surgery in two urban practices (total population = 10,420) over a four-week period.
methodThe primary outcome measure was use of doctor time for the index telephone or face-to-face consultation. Secondary outcomes were subsequent use of investigations and of services in the two-week period following consultation, frequency of blood pressure measurement and antibiotic prescriptions, and number of problems considered at consultation. Patient perceptions were measured by the Patient Enablement Instrument (PEI) and reported willingness to use telephone consultations in the future.
resultsTelephone consultations took less time (8.2 minutes versus 6.7 minutes; diff = 1.5, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.6 to 2.4, P = 0.002). Patients consulting by telephone reconsulted the GP more frequently in the two weeks that followed (0.6 consultations versus 0.4 consultations; diff = 0.2, 95% CI = 0.0 to 0.3, P = 0.01). Blood pressure was measured more often in the group of patients managed face-to-face (25/188 [13.3%] versus 12/181 [6.6%]; diff = 6.7%, 95% CI = 0.6% to 12.7%). There was no significant difference in patient perceptions or other secondary outcomes.
conclusionUse of telephone consultations for same-day appointments was associated with time saving, and did not result in lower PEI scores. Possibly, however, this short-term saving was offset by higher re-consultation and less use of opportunistic health promotion.
Indexed as
Identifiers
11942448PMC1314272W127481471What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.