IntellaTriage Insights: Our Blog

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.

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 the scores of our competitors in our market, we exceed both." - Martha Mozier, Vice President/Chief Operating Officer Challenge Hospice Brazos Valley initially started addressing [...]

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 premature career burnout. However, this isn’t the only consequence of having fewer nurses on the floor. These short-staffed shifts also jeopardize the health and safety [...]

Research shows that wages and benefits account for 56% of U.S. hospital costs – this far exceeds the other categories of expenditure, which include professional fees (11.9%), prescription drugs (6.7%), utilities (1.8%), liability insurance (1.2%), and other line items (22.4%). Since staffing is such a major expense, many healthcare organizations have begun to hire fewer nurses [...]