Informing patients on planned consultation time – a randomised controlled intervention study of consultation time in primary care

Figures & data

Figure 1. Flow chart of inclusion and randomisation process. *All patients booked for an appointment with a physician at the four PHCC:s during the study. **Patients >18 years old, were included to be randomised during the booking of an appointment to a physician. ***Patients <18 years old, not speaking Swedish, in need of an interpreter or had a known cognitive impairment were not included to be randomised. ****Patients that spoke too little Swedish or had a cognitive impairment, as judged by the physician in the physician questionnaire, were excluded as well as patients where the individual study number was confused, forgotten by the physician or mistakenly used in duplicate questionnaires.

Table 1. Background characteristics.

	Intervention group	Control group
Mean age years (range)	56 (18–90)	58 (19–94)
Sex patients, n (%)
Female	72 (50.7)	72 (48.3)
Male	44 (31.0)	35 (23.5)
Missing	26 (18.3)	42 (28.2)
Sex physician, n (%)
Female	47 (33.1)	53 (35.6)
Male	95 (66.9)	96 (64.4)
Physician employment^a, n (%)
Employed	77 (54.2)	90 (60.4)
Non-employed	65 (45.8)	59 (39.6)
Appointment module^b, n (%)
30 min	88 (62.0)	113 (75.8)
15 min	20 (14.1)	11 (7.4)
Other	19 (13.3)	18 (12.2
Missing	15 (10.6)	7 (4.7)

^aLong term temporary physicians, trainees in general practice and employed General Practitioners were categorised as Employed whereas locums, other short term temporary physicians and post-graduate residents were categorised as Non-employed.

^bTime frame in the physician schedule which includes the consultation and administrative duties related to the appointment. The planned consultation time informed to patients was shorter, see methods section.

Table 2. Results mean consultation time in the intervention group compared to the control group for all appointments, for appointments in the most common appointment modules and stratified on physician employment situation. Bold values are significant p values.

	Intervention group		Control group
Mean time (min)	Time (min)	n	Time (min)	n	p*
Total	18.4	141	19.7	147	0.19
30 min appointment module	19.3	87	20.9	113	0.17
15 min appointment module	14.3	20	14.6	11	0.86
Mean time employees (min)
Total	17.6	76	20.3	89	0.04
30 min appointment module	18.6	51	22.0	71	0.02
15 min appointment module	13.9	11	15.0	4	0.74
Mean time non-employees (min)
Total	19.4	65	18.7	58	0.66
30 min appointment module	20.4	36	19.1	42	0.48
15 min appointment module	14.8	9	14.4	7	0.88

*p was tested using two-sided t-test.