Concordance between 8-1-1 HealthLink BC Emergency iDoctor-in-assistance (HEiDi) virtual physician advice and subsequent health service utilization for callers to a nurse-managed provincial health information telephone service

Table 3 Operational Definitions of VP advice and corresponding sensitivity criteria for concordance

VP Advice	Sensitivity Testing Concordance Criteria
Go to ED Now	The caller has a recorded ED visit, FP encounter, specialist encounter, or laboratory/radiology test within 48 h of the HEiDi call and did not have a recorded hospitalization before the other encounters
Seek FP care now^a	The caller has a recorded ED visit, FP encounter, specialist encounter, or laboratory/radiology test within seven days of the HEiDi call and did not have a recorded hospitalization before the other encounters
Schedule FP appointment^a	The caller has a recorded ED visit, FP encounter, specialist encounter, or laboratory/radiology test within seven days of the HEiDi call and did not have a recorded hospitalization before the other encounters
Self-Manage^b	No appropriate test available

^aIn conversations with VPs, they indicated that “seek FP care now” was considered more urgent than “schedule FP appointment” but noted that time to access FPs varies. A consensus existed that the appointment should be as soon as possible in the former scenario, and ideally within a week for the latter. Given potential access issues that may affect a plurality of patients, we included both dispositions with a one-week timeframe to assess if concordance patterns demonstrate a similar perception of urgency based on subsequent service use
^bNote the final category advises that service use is unnecessary, and so “time-to-concordance” is inverted as “time-to-discordance.”

ISSN: 1472-6963