How fast is fast enough? An audit and league table of response times of acute hospital NHS Trust switchboards in England.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To audit response times by all acute NHS hospital switchboards in England for external incoming calls. As with any audit, we set out to draw attention to efficiencies and deficiencies in the system, highlight problems, and suggest the first steps towards improving standards in a very important and poorly acknowledged part of our healthcare system.

Design

Telephone calls were made to hospital switchboards, and time to response was measured. The results were then audited.

Setting

Acute hospital NHS Trust switchboards in England.

Main outcome measures

Time to response by hospital switchboards. The target time was 20 seconds.

Results

Only 36% of 219 hospital switchboards met the 20 second target, with the average answering time across all switchboa

SUBMITTER: Shokrollahi K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2442135 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature