Medical Appointment Desk Telephone Triage.
Abstract
The demand for medical care frequently exceeds the ability of Air Force medical facilities to provide it. Appointment systems do little to alleviate this problem. One way to reduce the problem might be to provide medical appointments on the basis of urgency of need for care, rather than on a first-come, first-served basis as in current systems. The first step in developing such a system would be to determine if medical appointment clerks could accurately diagnose patients telephoning for an appointment. This thesis explored the possibility of such a system by having medical appointment clerks use a medical diagnosing algorithm to diagnose patients calling for an appointment at the Family Practice Clinic of the Air Force Medical Center at Wright-Patterson AFB Ohio. The experiment showed that it was possible for appointment clerks to accurately diagnose fifty-nine out of eighty-four patients. Keywords: Medical Services Hospitals; Dispensaries; Military Medicine Decision Making.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA161705
Entities
People
- Dean M. Wagner
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology