Centre d'Atenció Primària la Salut, Institut Català de la Salut, Passatge dels Encants s/n, 08914, Badalona, Spain.
BMC Fam Pract. 2013 Oct 3;14:146. doi: 10.1186/1471-2296-14-146.
There has been created an online communication tool with the objective to improve the communication among different levels of care, between Primary Care clinicians and Specialists. This tool is web 2.0 based technology (ECOPIH project). It allows to review clinical cases and to share knowledge. Our study will evaluate its impact in terms of reduction on the number of referrals to three specialties two years after the use of this tool.
METHODS/DESIGN: Open, multicenter, controlled, non random intervention study over 24 months. Study population includes 131 Primary Care Physicians assigned to nine health centers. The study will compare the clinicians that use the ECOPIH with the ones that do not use the tool. Also, professionals that start to use the tool during the period time of the study will be included.The number of annual referrals during the first and second year will be analyzed and retrospectively compared with the previous year to the implementation of the tool. Moreover, it will be assessed the level of satisfaction of the professionals with the tool and to what extend the tool responds to their needs.
The implementation of ECOPIH in the field of Primary Health Care can decrease the number of referrals from primary care to specialist care.It is expected that the reduction will be more noticeable in the group of professionals that use more intensively the tool. Furthermore, we believe that it can be also observed with the professionals that read the contributions of the others.We anticipate high degree of customer satisfaction as it is a very helpful resource never used before in our environment.
为了改善不同医疗层级之间、基层医疗临床医生与专家之间的沟通，我们开发了一种在线交流工具。该工具基于网络 2.0 技术（ECOPIH 项目），可以用于回顾临床病例和分享知识。我们将评估其使用两年后，对减少向三个专科转诊数量的影响。
方法/设计：这是一项为期 24 个月的开放性、多中心、对照、非随机干预研究。研究对象包括分配到 9 个卫生中心的 131 名基层医疗临床医生。我们将比较使用 ECOPIH 的临床医生与未使用该工具的临床医生。此外，还将纳入在研究期间开始使用该工具的专业人员。将分析第一年和第二年的年度转诊数量，并与工具实施前的前一年进行回顾性比较。此外，还将评估专业人员对该工具的满意度以及该工具在多大程度上满足他们的需求。
ECOPIH 在基层医疗领域的实施可以减少从基层医疗向专科医疗的转诊数量。预计在更频繁使用该工具的专业人员中，减少的效果更为显著。此外，我们认为，对于阅读其他专业人员贡献的专业人员，也可以观察到这种效果。我们预计客户满意度会很高，因为这是我们所处环境中从未使用过的非常有用的资源。
