Analysing the Impact of Support Plans on Telehealth Services Users with Complex Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on people’s mental health. This study analysed 430,969 contacts made to more than 100 telehealth services by 1064 callers with more complex needs who had tailored support plans in place between 31 December 2017 and 3 March 2022. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of these callers with complex needs, identify caller types, and explore whether the support plans effectively reduced the caller’s calling demands. This study used a mixed method. A descriptive analysis was used to explore callers’ socio-demographics and calling demand patterns. A K-prototype clustering algorithm was conducted to group callers into four clusters (The Former Users, The Loyal Users, The High Frequency Users and The One-Off Users). Furthermore, a randomisation test was used to compare changes in callers’ calling behaviours in different periods. This study presented insights into calling demand patterns and identified calling behaviours for those callers seeking support via helplines. The result showed that callers’ average daily contact frequency was significantly reduced due to the effect of the support plans. However, the support plan also had a small influence on reducing the calling frequency for callers from The Loyal Users cluster and The High Frequency Users cluster which suggests that callers from these clusters may need additional support.