Hospice and Home Health

UNC Continuing Care Services, a prominent North Carolina home health and hospice organization, struggled with maintaining and recruiting nurses until they began to think about their after-hours triage strategy in an entirely new way.

The current environment of staffing shortage plus hospice industry growth forces organizations to think outside the box for a nurse staffing solution. External resources such as outsourced triage can help growing hospice organizations retain nurses, repurpose resources, and optimize operations.

Guest writer Erin Whalen of Compassionate Coaching offers self-awareness and self-care strategies for your after-hours nursing staff. People who are arguably doing the most important work – nurses at the bedside of the dying – don’t have a clear separation between their workday ending and their non-work life beginning. This type of workload can lead to burnout, staff retention issues, and a steep decline in team morale.

Practically speaking, the best way to improve your patients’ experience and thus your CAHPS scores is by putting the patient or caregiver in touch with a registered nurse every chance you get.

At IntellaTriage, 2022 passed quickly in a whirlwind of company growth, professional successes, and nurse-first triage. Above all other indicators of success this year, IntellaTriage has delivered on our promise: to improve the lives of nurses and patients. Our team strives daily to embody our company mission and is proud to know that we do so every day. To share a recent team member’s quote: “It makes me proud to say I work for IntellaTriage and to know I have an impact on the lives of so many patients, families, and nurses.” Join us for a quick recap of all we’ve accomplished in 2022 and the ripple effects of our essential work:

75% of the week occurs after you shut your agency doors, impacting multiple facets of your operations – especially your workforce. Learn how CommonSpirit Health at Home optimized their after-hours with after-hours action plans that included outsourcing triage to IntellaTriage. 

While the staffing crisis continues to grab the spotlight, we must also work to keep patient experience in the light and find a way to address both issues simultaneously. Learn how IntellaTriage nurse-based triage can improve the patient experience and reduce nurse burnout.

For most hospice and home health agencies, outsourcing a nurse-based triage service is more cost-effective and efficient than handling after-hours calls in-house. At IntellaTriage, we realize that hospice and home health providers won’t trust your nurse-based triage care to just anyone. So here is a sneak peek into what our triage nurses do, who they are, and why they are so successful in this space. 

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.