How fast is fast enough? An audit and league table of response times of acute hospital NHS Trust switchboards in England.
OBJECTIVE
To audit response times by all acute NHS hospital switchboards in England for external incoming calls. As with any audit, we set out to draw attention to efficiencies and deficiencies in the system, highlight problems, and suggest the first steps towards improving standards in a very important and poorly acknowledged part of our healthcare system.


METHODS
Telephone calls were made to hospital switchboards, and time to response was measured. The results were then audited.


METHODS
Acute hospital NHS Trust switchboards in England.


METHODS
Time to response by hospital switchboards. The target time was 20 seconds.


RESULTS
Only 36% of 219 hospital switchboards met the 20 second target, with the average answering time across all switchboards being 45 seconds. The best performer was University Hospital North Durham (mean = 1 second) and the worst Bristol Royal Infirmary (mean = 381 seconds). We found that automated answer systems substantially increase the answer time to an operator; the fastest automated service was at Princess Royal University Hospital, which was ranked 69th.


CONCLUSIONS
We recommend a formal NHS-wide audit system for switchboard response times.
Shokrollahi
Kayvan
K
Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery, Department of Plastic Surgery, Morriston Hospital Swansea SA6 6NL, UK. kshokrollahi@hotmail.com
Tadiparthi
Sujatha
S
Jayagopal
Sathish
S
D004739:England; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008485:Medical Audit; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D013689:Telephone / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013997:Time Factors