Recruiting 9126 Primary Care Patients by Telephone: Characteristics of Participants Reached on Landlines, Basic Cell Phones, and Smartphones

In primary care, collecting information about patient health behaviors between appointments can be advantageous. Physicians and researchers who embrace phone-based technology may find valuable ways to monitor patient-reported outcome measures of health (PROM). However, the level of phone technology sophistication should be tailored to the phone use of the population of interest. Despite the growing use of telephones as a means to gather PROM, little is known about phone use among primary care patients. As part of an ongoing study, the authors recruited primary care patients (N = 9126) for a health behavior screening study by calling them on the primary contact number listed in their medical record. The current study evaluated the frequency with which individuals were reached on landlines, basic cell phones, and smartphones, and examined participant characteristics. The majority of participants (63%) used landlines as their primary contact. Of the 37% using cell phones on the recruitment call, most (71%) were using smartphones. Landline users were significantly older than cell phone users (61.4 vs. 46.2 years; P = .001). Cell phone use did not differ significantly between participants with a college education and those without (37% vs. 38%; P = .82); however, smartphone use did differ (61% vs. 77%; P = .01). The majority of participants sampled used landlines as their primary telephone contact. Researchers designing phone-based PROM studies for primary care may have the broadest intervention reach using interactive voice response telephone technology, as patients could report health outcomes from any type of phone, including landlines.