From Caregiver Frustration to Industry Leader: The IntellaTriage Origin Story

In 2008, IntellaTriage was founded from a deeply personal experience. Our founder, Suzi Meschbach, saw firsthand how fragmented after-hours nurse triage care could impact not only patients  in hospice and home health, but also their families and clinicians.  As caregiver for an elderly grandparent while still juggling her career and family, Suzi Meschbach did not have a “normal” schedule and oftentimes had questions or needed assistance during after-hours. Calls went unanswered. Non-clinical agents fumbled through messages with no access to patient context. And when nurses were called after hours, they didn’t always have access to the information she needed.

Through her experience communicating with non-clinical answering services or nurses who didn’t have the patient record readily accessible, Suzi came up with an idea to deliver prompt, quality after-hours care with trained nurses who could access the full patient record.

She asked a simple but radical question:
“What if a real nurse could answer the phone every time a patient or caregiver called no matter what the hour?”

From that moment, IntellaTriage was born. Our mission then and now is clear:

Improve the lives of nurses and patients. Today, we do that for thousands of patients through thoughtful, nurse-first triage.

A Fragmented System: The State of After-Hours Care in 2008

Before 2008, the standard for after-hours care in hospice and home health was mostly non-clinical answering services. These services lacked:

• Clinical knowledge
• Access to patient records
• Decision-making capability
  The result? Poor patient experiences, unnecessary ER visits, and exhausted on-call nurses re-entering workflows without rest.

The opportunity wasn’t just about answering calls, it was a chance to redesign the after-hours care model around licensed triage nurses who understand patient needs, have access to patient records for insights and documentation, and can communicate with compassion.

The Nurse-First Triage Model: Transforming Hospice and Home Health

From day one, IntellaTriage prioritized a few things others didn’t:

• A licensed, experienced nurse answers every call (within  37 seconds on average)
• Our nurses operate directly within our partners’ EMRs for a full view into patients’ history and recent changes in condition
• IntellaTriage works closely with agency partner’s clinical leadership to customize  protocols that work for their nurses and patients
• Clinical notes are documented in real time within the agency’s EMR
• Daily activity reports delivered to clinical leadership inboxes before the daily huddle.

We were providing more than coverage. We were extending the care continuum throughout the night and weekend hours, filling one of the most persistent communication and operational gaps in post-acute care.

How IntellaTriage Reduces Burnout and Improves Patient Outcomes

Our earliest hires were hospice nurses and home health clinicians. We knew that if we centered our culture around the needs of nurses, they could take better care of patients, because we could better support nurses. That philosophy has carried us through years of growth and into partnerships with agencies of all sizes.

Today, our nurses manage after-hours triage for agencies across the country, answering the calls of thousands of patient and family members DAILY. What started as a small, nurse-run solution has grown into a national movement for better after-hours care. And we’re just getting started.

Want to learn how our nurse-first triage model supports agencies like yours? Explore our solutions.