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[The telephone accessibility of the prior appointment program]
M Sarmiento Gallego de la Sacristana1, E Martínez Sánchez, J Marín López
1Gerencia de Atención Primaria, Sector de Murcia.
Objective:
To determine the ease of access by telephone when making medical appointments.
Design:
Cross-sectional, observational, random sample.
Setting:
Primary care, Murcia Region.
Patients And Other Participants:
Centres with a previous appointments system (n = 25) and a random sample of the 276 practitioners involved (n = 97). We ruled out 4 practitioners for not having a telephone in their outer consulting room.
Measurements And Main Results:
We made telephone calls until we had obtained appointments with each of the practitioners, across three hour blocks. The result was an average of 2,333 calls/appointment, with a deflection of 2,271. The mode and median were 1, and the range 26. We found differences in the distribution of the calls across the three blocks (p < 0.05). Comparing rural centres with urban, we found a lower average number of calls in the first two blocks (p < 0.01).
Conclusions:
Telephone accessibility is at an appropriate level, both in rural and urban areas.