Development of one generic call centre for unplanned health needs. A qualitative study

Abstract

Introduction: A range of different telephone based services exists to serve the public with some sort of unplanned health needs (acute need). These are organized as call centres and offer services like medical emergency, response to automatic warning aids and more social services. However, even if it is valuable with many different services, it is not likely that the public know of all these services and furthermore they are resource demanding to operate. In Central Norway a group of municipalities together with a city have decided to develop one generic call centre with one phone number to offer better services and solve more enquirers by phone.