Satisfaction and patient outcomes of a telephone-based nurse triage service.

Purpose: Describe patient satisfaction and patient-reported outcomes after voluntary use of a telephonebased nurse triage service. Methods: A random sample of symptomatic callers who contacted the triage service in 1999 was identified. A computer-assisted telephone survey was conducted, resulting in a response rate of 58.9 percent and a sample size of 35,374. Summary: Overall satisfaction with the service was 90.4 percent and did not vary greatly when stratified by demographic and health-status characteristics. Of all callers who reported following the triage recommendation to use self-care instructions while monitoring the condition for change (n=12,037), 11.5 percent scheduled an office visit and 1.5 percent used hospital emergency-room (ER) services for further care. Conclusions: Overall satisfaction with telephone-based nurse triage services was high and did not vary substantially by caller characteristics.