[SALOMON, a collaboration model between primary and secondary care for nocturnal emergency calls]

Facing the aging of primary care practitioners and their still increasing duties, we implemented a new and original solution to maintain the continuity of primary care in the area surrounding of our university hospital. Thereby, we created a new model of nurse telephone triage for the regulation of out-of-hours primary care calls, the SALOMON algorithm ("Système Algorithmique Liégeois d'Orientation pour la Médecine Omnipraticienne Nocturne"). Following the nurse telephone triage and the assessment of the illness severity, the patient is referred to four potential orientations : Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Emergency Department Referred Consultation (EDRC), Primary Care Physician Home visit (PCPH) and Primary Care Physician Delayed visit (PCPD). In this article, we aim to describe the SALOMON model and present a 12-month feasibility study in order to determine the safety of the tool. We can also notice nurse and general practitioner satisfaction about this approach with a positive impact on the global primary care out-of-hour organization. Currently, SALOMON seems to be full of promise. Further investigations on a larger cohort are needed to determine more precisely the reliability of the algorithm.