Follow-up phone calls after an emergency department visit

Follow-up care of patients treated in an emergency department (ED) is an important component of patient care. Previous studies suggest that follow-up phone calls may improve patient compliance with discharge instructions.1-4 Most of these studies have used nurses to contact the families of children with relatively mild illnesses, such as otitis media or nonspecific viral illness. The families who received follow-up phone calls were more likely to keep their scheduled follow-up appointments than those who did not. We studied patients discharged from the Pediatric Emergency Department (PED) with moderate to severe illness for whom close follow-up is essential. We hypothesized that physician-initiated follow-up phone calls to parents of moderately ill children seen in the PED would improve parental compliance with primary care follow-up.