IntellaTriage Insights: Our Blog

We spent time with Ashley Calloway, IntellaTriage Director of Clinical Operations, exploring creative ways to fill after-hours scheduling without compromising care or nurse sanity. We know hospice and home health agencies struggle to fill those on-call shifts while keeping their nursing staff happy, engaged, and rested enough to best care for patients.

Several years into the pandemic and the ongoing staffing crisis, nurse burnout concerns still plague hospice and home health agencies. Their nursing staff continue to feel the pinch of heavy workloads and understaffing. Hospice and home health agencies must find a way to support fewer nurses with fewer resources. To help reduce burnout, agencies can outsource after-hours calls.

When it comes down to it, the main decider in how you choose between nurse-based triage and other after-hours models lies in the patient experience. A nurse-first after-hours triage provider connects your patients with a live caregiver at every encounter.

Over five months, utilizing the improved protocols, education, ongoing tracking, and monthly meetings with IntellaTriage, Coastal Hospice realized over 40% reduction of after-hours medication call volume.

Regardless of how your agency operates your internal after-hours triage, appropriately managing these calls requires skills that differ from bedside nursing. Consider these best practices if your agency manages your after-hours call internally. 

Understanding the different options for after-hours care models and choosing the model that best fits your agency’s goals can significantly impact overall patient satisfaction, nurse burnout, and your bottom line.

“We started looking at a triage outsourcing company and then talked to our staff nurses: “What would you think if we did this?” There was a resounding: Oh wow, you mean I can sleep at night?!”

Average Daily Census: 151 (at time of publication) Location: Bryan, Texas “Currently, our satisfaction scores for evenings and weekends are around 85%. When you look at the national data and …

Earlier this month, we discussed the impact of short-staffing shifts for healthcare workers. Splitting more patients between fewer nurses results in exhaustion, job dissatisfaction, and frustration: all the ingredients for …