If you're a patient in the UK, increasingly, your first interaction with the healthcare system won't be the traditional face to fact chat with your doctor - instead you'll have a telephone consultation.
The prevalence of these telephone consultations is increasing, and being promoted by CCGs and private companies who administer them - usually as a cost saving measure.
Now new research published on bmj.com looks at these phone consultation - how often they happen, how patients feel about them, and how much money they actually save.
In this podcast we're joined by Martin Roland, emeritus professor of health services research at Cambridge University, to find out more.
Read the full research:
http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j4197