Estimating Weekly Call Volume to a National Nurse Telephone Triage Line in an Influenza Pandemic.

ABSTRACT: Telephone nurse triage lines, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Flu on Call^®, a national nurse triage line, may help reduce the surge in demand for health care during an influenza pandemic by triaging callers, providing advice about clinical care and information about the pandemic, and providing access to prescription antiviral medication. We developed a Call Volume Projection Tool to estimate national call volume to Flu on Call^® during an influenza pandemic. The tool incorporates 2 influenza clinical attack rates (20% and 30%), 4 different levels of pandemic severity, and different initial "seed numbers" of cases (10 or 100), and it allows variation in which week the nurse triage line opens. The tool calculates call volume by using call-t

SUBMITTER: Adhikari BB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6707072 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep/Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature