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Objective: Therapeutic Alliance Portal is established as a reminder – digital phone call system that aims to help ‘patients and their relatives’ to stay on the current treatment.
Methods: This abstract presents the numbers of patients who were registered to the digital call system between 2010 and first half of 2013 in Bolu Izzet Baysal Mental Health Hospital and Bolu Community Mental Health Center. Seven physicians especially during their rotation in Community Mental Health Center, accessed to the system via their specific passwords. Prior to the registry, all patients and/or their relatives were informed about the system. By getting consent approval physicians have registered their eligible patients to the system with a patient specific code or number which they have given in their protocol. System requires only medication or visit time and a phone number which is provided by patients or their relatives. When the system gets activated, it automatically calls patients / relatives and reminds “visit date” or “medication time” or both. For the “visit date reminder call” patients or relatives are called 7 days before the visit. For the “medication time reminder call” patients and relatives are called one day before the medication time, at the medication time and one day after the medication time. In this last call patients and their relatives asked to dial ‘1’ if they have gone and received treatment and dial ‘2’ if they didn’t .Physicians can examine results of the calls and get idea about their patient’s compliance by accessing the system.
Results: In total 90 patients have been registered to the system during 3,5 years and 5 patients have dropped out. 32 patients were registered to the portal in 2010. Number of the patients registered to the portal in 2011, 2012 and 2013 were 26, 30 and 2, respectively. Number of patients registered for visit date in 2010, 2011, 2012 were 12, 6 and 2, and number of patients registered for medication time in the same time line were 32, 25, 30 and 2, Some patients registered for both visit date and medication time.
Conclusion: Low drop - out rates shows us that patients and their relatives are highly satisfied in using this reminder system. When we think about work overload in Mental Health Hospitals and community mental health centers, it simplifies follow up period and helps physicians to keep their patients in treatment for a longer duration.