Telehealth triage ‘not safe’ for chest pain: study
Findings from a Dutch out-of-hours service shows phone triage underestimates the condition in more than one quarter of patients
GP out-of-hours phone triage systems for chest pain are neither safe nor efficient, a Dutch study suggests. 
The researchers found the system underestimated the urgency of chest pain in more than one quarter of patients whose pain later proved to be either acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or another life-threatening event.
The team from the Julius Centre for Health Sciences and Primary Care in Utrecht listened back to telephone conversations with more than 2000 patients who called the GP out-of-hours service between 2014 and 2016.
They compared these with final diagnoses recorded in medical notes.
