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The quality, safety and governance of telephone triage and advice services – an overview of evidence from systematic reviews

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Health Services Research, August 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (93rd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (93rd percentile)

Mentioned by

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3 policy sources
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44 X users

Citations

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72 Dimensions

Readers on

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259 Mendeley
Title
The quality, safety and governance of telephone triage and advice services – an overview of evidence from systematic reviews
Published in
BMC Health Services Research, August 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12913-017-2564-x
Pubmed ID
Authors

Rebecca Lake, Andrew Georgiou, Julie Li, Ling Li, Mary Byrne, Maureen Robinson, Johanna I. Westbrook

Abstract

Telephone triage and advice services (TTAS) are increasingly being implemented around the world. These services allow people to speak to a nurse or general practitioner over the telephone and receive assessment and healthcare advice. There is an existing body of research on the topic of TTAS, however the diffuseness of the evidence base makes it difficult to identify key lessons that are consistent across the literature. Systematic reviews represent the highest level of evidence synthesis. We aimed to undertake an overview of such reviews to determine the scope, consistency and generalisability of findings in relation to the governance, safety and quality of TTAS. We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library for English language systematic reviews focused on key governance, quality and safety findings related to telephone based triage and advice services, published since 1990. The search was undertaken by three researchers who reached consensus on all included systematic reviews. An appraisal of the methodological quality of the systematic reviews was independently undertaken by two researchers using A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews. Ten systematic reviews from a potential 291 results were selected for inclusion. TTAS was examined either alone, or as part of a primary care service model or intervention designed to improve primary care. Evidence of TTAS performance was reported across nine key indicators - access, appropriateness, compliance, patient satisfaction, cost, safety, health service utilisation, physician workload and clinical outcomes. Patient satisfaction with TTAS was generally high and there is some consistency of evidence of the ability of TTAS to reduce clinical workload. Measures of the safety of TTAS tended to show that there is no major difference between TTAS and traditional care. Taken as a whole, current evidence does not provide definitive answers to questions about the quality of care provided, access and equity of the service, its costs and outcomes. The available evidence also suggests that there are many interactional factors (e.g., relationship with other health service providers) which can impact on measures of performance, and also affect the external validity of the research findings.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 44 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 259 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 259 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 36 14%
Researcher 32 12%
Student > Ph. D. Student 24 9%
Student > Bachelor 19 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 18 7%
Other 54 21%
Unknown 76 29%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 59 23%
Nursing and Health Professions 50 19%
Business, Management and Accounting 12 5%
Social Sciences 12 5%
Computer Science 8 3%
Other 30 12%
Unknown 88 34%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 39. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 September 2023.
All research outputs
#1,056,665
of 25,411,814 outputs
Outputs from BMC Health Services Research
#274
of 8,650 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#21,307
of 323,539 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Health Services Research
#10
of 147 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,411,814 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 8,650 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 323,539 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 147 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.