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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 switchboards being 45 seconds. The best performer was University Hospital North Durham (mean = 1 second) and the worst Bristol Royal Infirmary (mean = 381 seconds). We found that automated answer systems substantially increase the answer time to an operator; the fastest automated service was at Princess Royal University Hospital, which was ranked 69th. CONCLUSIONS:We recommend a formal NHS-wide audit system for switchboard response times.

SUBMITTER: Shokrollahi K

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

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Shokrollahi Kayvan K Tadiparthi Sujatha S Jayagopal Sathish S

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 20080701 7

<h4>Objective</h4>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.<h4>Design</h4>Telephone calls were made to hospital switchboards, and time to response was measured. The results were then audited.< ...[more]

PMID: 18591690

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Project description:BackgroundCore podiatry involves treatment of the nails, corns and callus and also giving footwear and foot health advice. Though it is an integral part of current podiatric practice little evidence is available to support its efficacy in terms of research and audit data. This information is important in order to support the current NHS commissioning process where services are expected to provide data on standards including outcomes. This study aimed to increase the evidence base for this area of practice by conducting a multi-centre audit in 8 NHS podiatry departments over a 1-year period.MethodsThe outcome measure used in this audit was the Podiatry Health Questionnaire which is a self completed short measure of foot health including a pain visual analogue scale and a section for the podiatrist to rate an individual's foot health based on their podiatric problems. The patient questionnaire was completed by individuals prior to receiving podiatry care and then 2 weeks after treatment to assess the effect of core podiatry in terms of pain and foot health.Results1047 patients completed both questionnaires, with an age range from 26-95 years and a mean age of 72.9 years. The podiatrists clinical rating at baseline showed 75% of patients had either slight or moderate podiatric problems. The differences in questionnaire and visual analogue scores before and after treatment were determined according to three categories - better, same, worse and 75% of patients' scores either remained the same or improved after core podiatry treatment. A student t-test showed a statistical significant difference in pre and post treatment scores where P < 0.001, though the confidence interval indicated that the improvement was relatively small.ConclusionCore podiatry has been shown to sustain or improve foot health and pain in 75% of the patients taking part in the audit. Simple outcome measures including pain scales should be used routinely in podiatric practice to assess the affect of different aspects of treatments and improve the evidence base for podiatry.

Dataset Information

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

Publications

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

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