 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Francesca Paula Cariello, PhD, RN, Naval Medical Clinic, Quantico, 3259 Catlin Avenue, Quantico, VA 22134 and Robert G. Harmon, MD, United HealthCare Group, Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22131, 703.394.7636, mlnfpc@comcast.net.
The current reimbursement structure of health care in the U.S. motivates the providers of health care services to deliver these services with a cost conscious mentality without compromising quality. This has led to the development of alternative methods of delivering health care services, one of which is Computerized Telephone Nurse Triage. The purpose of this study was to investigate service quality from the perception of callers who used this system on behalf of a pediatric client. Cost was evaluated by comparing what the caller would have done if they did not speak with nurse triage with what they actually did after their interaction with nurse triage. A modified version of the SERVQUAL tool was administered via telephone survey to members of a managed health care plan who recently used nurse triage services for a pediatric patient. Findings were that the majority of callers, employed female parents, rated the level of service quality very highly. Education, employment status, age of the caller, child gender, birth order among siblings and age of child did not affect the rating of service quality. Relationship to the child had an effect on the rating of service quality as men/fathers rated the level of service quality slightly lower than their female/mother counterparts. The evaluation of cost revealed that the action taken by the caller after they spoke with the nurse resulted in significant cost savings. Computerized Telephone Nurse Triage in this study is a well-accepted cost-saving alternative method of health care delivery that can effectively serve a variety of callers and pediatric patients.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Health Care Delivery, Quality
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: United HealthCare Optum NurseLine
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Employment. United HealthCare provided research support for this study, but in no way had any input into the design, data collection, statistical analysis, interpretation of data or reporting of findings or recommendations. These were soley by the prima