ArticleBMJ open2019
Sociodemographic and health-related determinants for making repeated calls to a medical helpline: a prospective cohort study.
Article in BMJ open, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Trial
- Elderly Medical Patients' Experience of an Acute Readmission to the Emergency Department-An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.Scandinavian journal of caring sciences · 2025Article
- Danish primary care: a focus on general practice in the Danish healthcare system.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2025Article
- Characteristics and triage in older citizens calling a semi-acute medical helpline in Denmark: a prospective cohort study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- "I surely don't call for fun": experiences of being a "frequent caller" to the Danish emergency helpline.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Observational
- One for all or all for one? An integrative review of research on frequent callers.PEC innovation · 2022Article
- Nowcasting (Short-Term Forecasting) of COVID-19 Hospitalizations Using Syndromic Healthcare Data, Sweden, 2020.Emerging infectious diseases · 2022Article
- An evaluation of service user experience, clinical outcomes and service use associated with urgent care services that utilise telephone-based digital triage: a systematic review protocol.Systematic reviews · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo identify sociodemographic and health-related characteristics of callers' making repeated calls within 48 hours to a medical helpline, compared with those who only call once.
settingIn the Capital Region of Denmark people with acute, non-life-threatening illnesses or injuries are triaged through a single-tier medical helpline for acute, healthcare services.
participantsPeople who called the medical helpline between 18 January and 9 February 2017 were invited to participate in the survey. During the period, 38 787 calls were handled and 12 902 agreed to participate. Calls were excluded because of the temporary civil registration number (n=78), the call was not made by the patient or a close relative (n=699), or survey responses were incomplete (n=19). Hence, the analysis included 12 106 calls, representing 11.131 callers' making single calls and 464 callers' making two or more calls within 48 hours. Callers' data (age, sex and caller identification) were collected from the medical helpline's electronic records. Data were enriched using the callers' self-rated health, self-evaluated degree of worry, and registry data on income, ethnicity and comorbidities. The OR for making repeated calls was calculated in a crude, sex-adjusted and age-adjusted analysis and in a mutually adjusted analysis.
resultsThe crude logistic regression analysis showed that age, self-rated health, self-evaluated degree of worry, income, ethnicity and comorbidities were significantly associated with making repeated calls. In the mutually adjusted analysis associations decreased, however, odds ratios remained significantly decreased for callers with a household income in the middle (OR=0.71;95% CI 0.54 to 0.92) or highest (OR=0.68;95% CI 0.48 to 0.96) quartiles, whereas immigrants had borderline significantly increased OR (OR=1.34;95% CI 0.96 to 1.86) for making repeated calls.
conclusionsFindings suggest that income and ethnicity are potential determinants of callers' need to make additional calls within 48 hours to a medical helpline with triage function.
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