BackgroundTo investigate opinions among employees at an Out-of-Hours general practitioner (OOH-GP) service and a safety alarm service about the establishment of a generic call-centre.MethodsQualitative study using individual and group interviews with 14 employees and managers involved in preparation of a merge into a new generic call-centre. They were asked about their opinions towards establishing a generic call-centre where all contact about unplanned health inquiries from the public had to be done by telephone and how to solve more requests on the phone. Data was analysed thematically.ResultsParticipants who alternate between call handling and direct patient contact (personnel at the OOH-GP) believed that just handling calls would be monotonous, less challenging and provide poorer quality. This was not supported by those working at the safety alarm service. There were different opinions about introducing mandatory use of decision support system for all inquiries, but it was a common understanding that it would lead to more patients in need of face-to-face consultations due to over triage. To solve more requests on the phone participants believed a public information campaign was required, that GPs received more of the emergency requests within their ordinary working hours and having salaried doctors in the OOH-GP service.ConclusionIn the participants’ opinion, successful establishment of a generic call-centre depends on the employees’ possibility of direct patient contact, clarifications on the use of decision support system and good information to the population.

Introduction: A range of different telephone based services exists to serve the public with some sort of unplanned health needs (acute need). These are organized as call centres and offer services like medical emergency, response to automatic warning aids and more social services. However, even if it is valuable with many different services, it is not likely that the public know of all these services and furthermore they are resource demanding to operate. In Central Norway a group of municipalities together with a city have decided to develop one generic call centre with one phone number to offer better services and solve more enquirers by phone.