Volume and Nature of Telephone Calls in a Specialty Headache Practice

Abstract

Telephone calls contribute substantially to the burden of caring for patients in a specialty headache practice. Patients with chronic daily headache and personality disorders contribute disproportionately to this telephone burden. Efforts to identify such patients at presentation and educate them regarding appropriate telephone use seem to be warranted.

Telehealth Management in Movement Disorder: A Retrospective Study

“…Collectively the present study and previous studies 11,12 suggest that individuals with MD call for a breadth of reasons that represent the care complexity in chronic diseases including psychiatric, non-motor, and cognitive concerns. Despite the fact that the population sampled in this study was largely PD (82%), the diversity and distribution of reasons for calls is largely consistent with the literature on after-hours office calls from other medical practices such as headache 16 , internal medicine 17 , psychiatry 18 , and family medicine 19 .…”

The Impact of Intensive Patient Education on Clinical Outcome in a Clinic‐Based Migraine Population

“…10-12 Those who remain are not necessarily content with their status or hesitant to voice their dissatisfaction; data reported from 1 headache clinic indicate that patients may generate more than 3 headache-related phone calls per clinic hour. 13 Some investigators have explored methods for circumventing these problems and providing migraine patients with more comprehensive management and the education required to derive optimal benefit from the treatment regimens prescribed. Lemstra et al randomized 80 patients with migraine to standard therapy versus multidisciplinary management ("intervention group") that included exercise therapy, massage therapy, and lectures regarding stress management, relaxation therapy, and diet.…”

“…Not surprisingly, migraine patients rank highly among the groups most dissatisfied with the medical care they receive, and fully half of all patients with migraine who make the initial effort cease their quest for medical care 10–12 . Those who remain are not necessarily content with their status or hesitant to voice their dissatisfaction; data reported from 1 headache clinic indicate that patients may generate more than 3 headache‐related phone calls per clinic hour 13 …”

Do Headache Patients Require More Care in Between Visits Than Other Neurology Outpatients?

“…4 In the subspecialty of headache medicine, it was already noted before the widespread use of EMR that remote patient care (ie, in that study, telephone calls) contributes substantially to the burden of caring for headache patients in an outpatient setting. 5 presumably similar clinics in the United States has a higher burden of remote patient care compared to other neurologic clinics/subspecialties, in addition to the general assumption that remote interaction with patients is increasing with the spread of the EMR, 1,2 an assumption that could not be tested in this cross-sectional study.…”