Telephone contact of patients visiting a large, municipal emergency department: Can we rely on numbers given during routine registration?

We sought to determine whether we could successfully contact patients for f ollow-up using telephone numbers given during routine emergency department (ED) registration, Every fifth patient visiting our ED during the study per iod was eligible. Three calls were made to each number. Calls began 7 days after the ED visit. Of 1,136 patients, we successfully contacted 478 (42.1% ). Of those patients unreachable across all three attempts, 183 (16.1%) had given wrong numbers, 133 (11.7%) had disconnected Lines, and 156 (13.7%) h ad three consecutive "no answers.') Females and patients with nonurgent com plaints were significantly more likely to be contacted. Despite stringent c alling protocols, we successfully contacted only 42% of our patients. Nearl y 28% gave wrong or disconnected numbers. Placing two additional calls to t hose patients who were not home or did not answer initially nearly doubled the overall contact rate, although similar efforts for patients who initial ly gave wrong or disconnected numbers yielded no appreciable gains. Females and nonurgent patients were overrepresented. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc .