Patient Self-Referral to Infectious Diseases Clinic: You Don’t Always Get What You Want But Hopefully What You Need

摘要

BackgroundPatients call into the departments at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) to request appointments directly for all specialties. The Infectious Diseases (ID) department chose to evaluate these self-referred patients being seen in our clinic due to (1) limited outpatient clinic appointment availability and (2) patients’ perception of need may not align with the subspecialty care provided.