Yousman, Laurie C
Khunte, Akshay
Hsiang, Walter
Jain, Siddharth
Forman, Howard
Wiznia, Daniel
Article History
Received: 7 January 2021
Accepted: 26 March 2021
First Online: 8 April 2021
Declarations
:
: This study received an exemption waiver from the Yale IRB. Informed consent was not obtained for this study because we did not research direct behavior of the individuals called, we simply assessed the clinic’s policies, as approved of by the Yale IRB. It would be impractical to obtain a subject’s authorization for this process as knowledge of the survey may bias the results, as some clinics may be more likely to accept a patient’s insurance or change a patient’s referral status or change a patient’s appointment wait time if they know they are being surveyed. The secret shopper survey was conducted in concordance with the follow guidelines: Clinic information was obtained from search engines and urgent care center databases. Each office was contacted over the phone two times, once in March and again in August. A standardized script was be used to inquire about clinic policies surrounding Covid-19 testing. No identifying data were collected about the individual who answered the phone, only demographic information about the clinic itself. All research was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
: Not applicable
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.