Mapping Greener HealthcareMapping Greener Healthcare

The renal unit at the University Hospital of Coventry and Warwickshire has been successfully running a twice-monthly telephone clinic to provide follow up to transplant patients since 2006 to reduce the inconvenience to patients of frequent trips to hospital. Telephone clinics are offered to patients at the discretion of the clinical team. Patients must have a stable transplant function, and factors such as the patient's hearing and co-morbidities are also considered. Patients who are suitable for telephone follow-ups are offered the choice to remain in the traditional follow up system or switch to quarterly telephone clinic follow up, with just one annual traditional (‘face-to-face’) outpatient appointment at their local renal clinic. 

The UCHW service now provides follow up to approximately 125 of the 360 patients with stable transplants of more than one year's standing.

In preparation for a telephone consultation, patients undertake their blood tests in the normal way (at UHCW this entails visiting either their GP, one of four local hospitals, or the city centre phlebotomist service). Patients are also asked to provide up-to-date blood pressure and weight readings (which can either be taken at home or at the Family Practice). Telephone appointments are scheduled to last 10-15 minutes, and the patients ring in at designated times. Letters are sent to GP’s in the normal manner. Blood test forms are sent out to patients along with their next appointment time.

Patient Safety Risk Management

 Patients in whom follow-up is predominantly telephone-based may be examined by clinicians less frequently and this may introduce a risk to patient safety. Although further research is undoubtedly required, the medical literature does not appear to indicate that telephone consultations increase the risk to patient safety when used to provide routine follow up of patients with chronic diseases. Indeed, some studies show the opposite effect. However, efforts should be made to reduce the risk to patient safety in all aspects of clinical care, and two clear measures exist in relation to telephone consultations. Firstly, the exclusion of patients for whom telephone consultations might be inappropriate is vital. Secondly, should a clinician undertaking a telephone consultation identify a need to examine a patient, the system must allow the organisation of a face-to-face review in a timely and convenient fashion. The possibility of missing skin cancers may be a particular concern to clinicians providing telephone-based care for renal transplant recipients taking immunosuppressants. All patients, irrespective of their follow up modality, should be educated to look for and report new or changing skin lesions. In reality, those patients with a prior history of skin cancer will have open access to the local dermatology service. Those reporting their first skin lesion will usually be seen faster if referred by their General Practitioner (under the ‘2 week wait’ referral system for suspected skin cancers). The practice of the clinicians in the University Hospital of Coventry and Warwickshire telephone unit is therefore to ask these patients to seek a review (and possible referral) by their General Practitioner.

GETTING STARTED – ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE

Ascertain the size and frequency of the telephone clinic you wish to run.

1. Determine the catchment population for the telephone clinic. You may wish, eventually, to offer the service to all renal transplant patients under the care of the renal service. However, it may be simpler to begin by running a telephone clinic to cater for those patients under the care of a particular consultant.

2. Within this catchment population, estimate the potential number of patients that might be suitable for follow up by telephone clinic. Start by identifying the number of patients with stable renal transplants of more than one year’s standing. You might choose to ask these patients, at this early stage, whether they would be likely to opt for telephone consultations. This would provide you with a good understanding of the capacity to which to develop the transplant clinic. It would also allow you to return to these patients directly once the opportunity to book patients into the clinic arises, hopefully reducing the period for which the clinic is ‘underfilled’.

3. Clarify how many patients you envisage enrolling in the transplant clinic. Perhaps begin slowly, by developing a clinic with capacity to follow up around 10-20% of the patients with stable renal transplants (as, of course, not every one of the patients you have identified so far will meet the necessary criteria, or indeed wish to switch to follow up by telephone) or around 50% of those patients who have indicated that they would prefer to be followed up in this way.

4. Given the number of patients you intend to follow up by telephone consultation, the approximate frequency with which you plan to review them, and the duration of time you anticipate allocating to each consultation (usually 10-15 minutes), ascertain how frequently you will need to hold telephone clinics.

Consider the resources you will require.

5. Ensure that your department will have the necessary resources and administrative support to run the clinic. Once the telephone clinic is running near to its intended full capacity, the reduction in the number of consultations in other clinics should ‘free up’ the staff and resources required for the telephone clinic, but this might not happen immediately.

6. Identify where you will run the clinic. For example, by moving the clinic to your office you will free up a room in the outpatient department (but you would need to re-organise the delivery of patient notes).

7. Identify how patient blood tests will be undertaken. Any departure from current practice may have costing implications. Also, where necessary also consider how results will be retrieved, and whose responsibility this will be.

Determine how your unit will be funded for the telephone clinic.

8. Involve the Contracting Department in your hospital in order to commence negotiations with the Primary Care Trust commissioning body.

9. Ensure that any agreed tariff fully covers the activities entailed in the running of the telephone clinic.

Further tips

1. Ensure that patients appreciate that they can return to face-to-face appointments at a later date if they choose to do so.

2. It is important that the Trust and commissioning body define the unit of care covered by any agreed tariff. For example, it might be important to state whether or not impromptu phone calls between patients and clinicians that occur between designated telephone clinic appointments will also count as consultations.