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Efficiency and acceptability of an automated electronic system (DayCOR) compared with a telephone call system, for follow-up of day surgery patients

Post-discharge phone calls are a widely used yet suboptimal method of ascertaining recovery of day surgery patients. We compared the efficiency of an automated electronic system of follow-up, the Day Care Anaesthesia Outcomes Recording Registry (DayCOR), and a telephone call system that was standard practice in our non-profit private healthcare organisation in Victoria, Australia. We also surveyed a group of clinicians to assess their acceptance of DayCOR compared with the telephone call system. DayCOR is a web-based system which collects, alerts, manages and analyses patient-reported outcomes. Patients may opt in to respond to a 15-question survey via a link sent by text message or email. DayCOR’s patient response rate was 77.5%, compared with 66.0% for the telephone call system. Both systems collected data on clinical, process, and experience outcomes. Completeness of data collection was 100% using DayCOR compared with 51%–61.4% of data items using the telephone call system. We estimated that replacing our telephone call system with DayCOR to follow up 60,000 day surgery patients a year would represent an annual cost reduction of AUD$101,345 (53%) using manual demographic data entry, and AUD$142,745 (74%) if DayCOR was integrated with the institution’s existing administrative software. Seventy-eight percent of day surgery nurses and 94% of anaesthetists preferred DayCOR to the telephone call system. All anaesthetists surveyed stated that DayCOR provided more valuable feedback, and almost one-fifth had changed their clinical practice as a result. DayCOR’s efficiency and acceptability will allow more effective collection of post-discharge patient outcomes than is currently possible in our institution, and will support interventional studies aimed at improving quality of recovery of day surgery patients.