Nurse Triage Telehealth Solutions
The healthcare industry is at a crossroads between increased demand on their medical staff, growing patient populations, more chronic care conditions to attend to and a shrinking workforce. They now need to decide whether to put more demand on their current clinical staff, invest in infrastructure (telehealth technology and real estate) and staff to run an internal telehealth or medical call center or look to outside strategies to include telehealth offerings that employ a model that uses 24/7 nurse triage telehealth solutions to service patient populations.
Traditional medical call centers or “Answering Services” have been around for about 2o years, however licensed, Nurse based triage centers have only been around for a few years, but have grown substantially in the past two years — growth that continues, according to industry statistics.
When transitioning from a traditional medical call center (answering service) to a more comprehensive Nurse based triage service, all calls are addressed and solved by licensed nurse staff. This is an extreme departure from the low cost, minutes based model delivered by most answering services today that focus on short calls, designed to capture caller information and pass it on to the provider. The immediate attention given to the patient by a nurse (through a Nurse Based Triage Center) goes beyond simple data capture and can prevent unnecessary trips to the ER, while saving time and keeping your patients well and satisfied, experts say.
While nurse triage lines have been popular among hospice, home care and now physician groups, many health systems and ACOs are now considering nurse based triage services to serve as the gateway to improved care and better efficiencies with their internal staff. The trend today, no matter what specialty you provide, is that the nationwide nursing shortage is effecting most healthcare provider’s ability to provide effective care around the clock. With this continued pressure to serve growing patient populations the rest of healthcare is just now beginning to look at nurse triage services as a way to fine-tune their operations to better coordinate nurses on the front line with the needs of the patients and health systems and reducing the potential for burnout.
These are important points to keep in mind as you develop your telehealth strategy. Can your system afford to staff, build and maintain an internal call center taking into account the potential burnout factor and shortage of nurses. Or does it make sense to partner with a provider that has an established infrastructure and nationwide coverage to provide licensed nurse care to your patients, opening up a wide variety of options and solutions for your organization.
If you have ever wanted to explore a partnership with a nationwide provider of licensed nurse triage, contact us today to start a conversation.
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