A Student Telephone Intervention for Primary Care Patient Safety During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and Objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical students were unable to participate in clinical learning for several weeks. Many primary care patients no-showed to appointments and did not receive care. We implemented a telephone outreach program using medical students to call primary care patients who no-showed to appointments and did not receive care. Methods: A brief plan-do-study-act cycle was used to establish protocols and supervision for the phone calls. Results: In the first 5 weeks, of 3,274 scheduled patients there were 426 no-shows; 309 received outreach from students. We developed protocols for supervision, routing, and triage. Conclusion: It is feasible and educationally valuable to collaborate with students to reach patients who are at home due to the pandemic. Other practices could adapt this tool in similar situations.