The prognostic significance of early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention in inflammatory rheumatic diseases has been well documented. However, a shortage of rheumatologists often impedes this approach in clinical practice. Therefore, it is of importance to identify those patients referred for diagnosis who would benefit most from a specialist's care. We applied a telephone-based triage for a...

Same-day appointment requests are common and can be problematic for general practices that run appointment systems. In a questionnaire survey sent to 90 general practices in one health authority area (response rate 88%), a variety of management systems existed for dealing with same-day appointment requests. Managing the requests was found to be a significant cause of stress for many general pra...

BACKGROUND Advanced access has been forwarded as a strategy for reducing waiting times in primary care; however, previous evaluations have raised important issues regarding its appropriateness. OBJECTIVES The objectives of this paper are to assess the impact of advanced access on patient access to primary care services, and its broader effects on stakeholders. METHODS A quantitative analysi...

The financial health of a medical practice is heavily dependent upon the billing process. The billing process actually starts when the patient calls to make an appointment. If incorrect information is given during the appointment phone call, your chances of getting paid can be doomed from the start. There are several strategies you can put into place to increase the chances of being paid and im...

The effects of extending appointment length from 7.5 to 10.0 minutes in the evening surgeries of two general practitioners in one general practice were examined. The mean consultation length increased from 7.4 to 8.4 minutes. Most of this change appeared to be due to a small increase in the length of shorter consultations and was true for all age groups. The time that patients had to wait did n...

important to avoid just adding another set of prescriptions to professionals’ workloads and another layer of guilt for not living up to best practice at all times. The need for health professionals to understand why an individual child was not brought to their appointment is recognised as important but we require the necessary systems to achieve this and to be able to ask the question ‘Why was ...

BACKGROUND There is little published research into the impact, on both doctor and patient, of handing over responsibility for choosing appointment length to the patient. AIM To investigate what impact giving patients control of their appointment length has on the patient and doctor experience. DESIGN AND SETTING A qualitative study in a single medical practice in Inverness, Scotland. METH...

BACKGROUND The administrative and professional consequences of access targets for general practices, as detailed in the new GMS contract, are unknown. This study researched the effect of implementing the access targets of the new GP contract on general practice appointment systems, and practice manager satisfaction in a UK primary health care setting. METHODS A four-part postal questionnaire ...