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

Wilkinson, Joanne E; Bowen, Garrett; Gonzalez-Wright, Jeanette

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.