Association between telephone activity and features of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

ABSTRACT:

Background & aims

Telephone communication is common between healthcare providers and patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We analyzed telephone activity at an IBD care center to identify disease and patient characteristics associated with high levels of telephone activity and determine if call volume could identify individuals at risk for future visits to the emergency department (ED) or hospitalization.

Methods

We performed a prospective observational study in which we categorized telephone calls received by nursing staff over 2 years at a tertiary care IBD clinic (2475 patients in 2009 and 3118 in 2010). We analyzed data on 21,979 ingoing and outgoing calls in 2009 and 32,667 calls in 2010 and assessed associations between clinical factors and logged telephone e

SUBMITTER: Ramos-Rivers C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4031304 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature