Article

Improving patient return to general practice after specialist assessment.

Monash University and Alfred Health -- Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Australasian Psychiatry (impact factor: 0.86). 06/2011; 19(3):236-9. DOI:10.3109/10398562.2010.540247 pp.236-9
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a two-pronged, letter intervention strategy to improve the follow-up after referral (FAR) rate to general practitioners of patients referred for a psychiatric assessment.
The FAR rate of patients referred to the Inner South East Primary Mental Health Team (PMHT) between June 2007 and June 2008 was examined via telephone call, before and after the implementation of a process sending letters to patients and practice managers advising them to make an appointment to discuss recommendations resulting from the psychiatric assessment.
A statistically significant improvement (χ² (1, n = 44) = 5.81, p = 0.016) in FAR rate was observed for patients post-intervention, with 11/25 (44%) pre-intervention patients not returning to their referring general practitioner within 1 month of assessment, compared to 2/19 (10.5%) patients post-intervention.
The implementation of two simple and inexpensive measures resulted in a fourfold improvement in the return rate of patients to their referring general practitioner post-psychiatric assessment.

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Keywords

1 month
 
fourfold improvement
 
general practitioners
 
inexpensive measures
 
Inner South East Primary Mental Health Team
 
letter intervention strategy
 
patients
 
patients post-intervention
 
PMHT
 
practice managers
 
referring general practitioner
 
referring general practitioner post-psychiatric assessment
 
simple
 
statistically significant improvement
 
two-pronged
 

Fiona Foley