(Out of hours service in Denmark: evaluation five years after reform)
In this week's BMJ, a General Practice paper from Dr Bondo Christensen and Frede Olesen examines the reformed out of hours GP service in Denmark, five years after its introduction. The authors have found that the system, which has a fully trained general practitioner performing a telephone triage function (six or seven doctors serve around 600,000 people), has led to a fall in the number of hours on call for GPs. Home visits have largely been replaced by telephone consultations and despite an initial decrease in patient satisfaction with the out of hours service, the system is increasing in popularity.
Contact:
Dr Morten Bondo Christensen, Research Assistant, Research Unit for General Practice, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark MBC@alm.au.dk