Selecting a Nurse Triage Consultant



By Gina Tabone, MSN

Healthcare reform has placed pressure on organizations to provide access to clinical care in a manner that improves patient outcomes while appropriately utilizing resources. Nurse triage, a proven mechanism for achieving these goals, can be made even better with the help of a nurse triage consultant.

If you are considering working with a medical call center consultant, your organization is already a step ahead because you recognize the value of industry expertise. As a responsible leader, you will likely select a consultant who can meet your needs, direct your efforts, and ensure success for your call center, organization, and ultimately you. Remember, your reputation is on the line.

Your best interests are served by selecting a consulting group that is established, knowledgeable, and intuitive in respect to remote clinical care. When you’re looking for advice about a specific subject, there is an inherent intelligence that only comes from someone with personal and professional experience in that area. Medical call center expertise is not only a reasonable requirement, but also a vital factor to consider when hiring a consultant to develop a new medical call center or enhance your existing one.

Centralized call centers are rapidly emerging as the backbone of health related systems. Nurse triage offers patients direct access to 24/7 clinical care. The patient populations served by nurse triage programs include primary care, behavioral medicine, diabetics, recently discharged, and chronically ill. The scope of service is vast and so is the network of caregivers.

The call center and services offered, both clinical and non-clinical, do not exist in a vacuum. To be successful there needs to be an endorsement from the C-suite of the medical call center and its value in achieving strategic goals. Executive leadership needs to encourage staff in IT, telephony, nursing, informatics, marketing, and compliance to emphasize that their expertise is essential to the realization and effectiveness of improved access and patient satisfaction.

A medical call center nurse triage consultant provides an objective lens and is able to envision not only what success will look like, but also what needs to be done to attain it. There is no better combination of talents than a consultant who has both medical call center experience and the experience of being a clinician, namely a nurse. Nurses make a commitment to serve the need of the number one benefactor in healthcare: the patient.

Every piece of technology must be selected and implemented with the expectation of a streamlined communication pathway that results in successfully meeting the patient’s needs. Patients primarily prefer contacting providers by phone, texts, or emails. There is also an expectation that whenever illness strikes, a skilled clinician is waiting to help them. That is a reasonable expectation.

Ensuring that patient preferences are understood and provided for is a top priority for healthcare executives. Satisfied patients are often engaged patients, which often lead to improved health outcomes. Improved outcomes result in a better state of health for individuals and the population as a whole. Patients tend to rate their care more favorably and reimbursements are ultimately higher, resulting in the healthcare organization remaining sustainable.

Spending time on-site with a medical call center nurse triage client requires a team effort and ultimately one common goal: optimal patient care. A consultant is provided with a panoramic view of many facets of the operation with a focus on access, clinical care, potential for success and the patient experience. Each health system is distinct, but there is no denying that there are underlying commonalities. Consider these three recommendations when selecting a medical call center consultant:

  1. Only collaborate with subject matter experts who respect that patients come first.
  2. Understand that executive endorsement is imperative for success.
  3. The supreme benchmark that we all must achieve can be found in the answer to a single question: Is what I am doing improving the patient experience?

Gina Tabone MSN is a medical call center nurse triage consultant who teams with various healthcare organizations to develop and optimize medical call center services that exceed patient, provider, and employee expectations. Contact her at gina_tabone@teamhealth.com.

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