Today, home health and hospice providers are facing several operational challenges with on-call staff, including staffing shortages, limited budgets, and the need to improve patient outcomes as a part of the shift towards value-based care.
Fortunately, centralized triage has become an essential backbone for home health and hospice providers to rely on. It creates the perfect solution for reducing the burden on caregivers by providing clinical overflow support, and more compassionate and efficient approaches to home-based care.
There has always been a high demand for after-hours support in home health and hospice care. Unscheduled calls create ambiguity and inefficient staffing strategies that lead to either too many or too few staff ready to meet patient demand. This can impact local branches with an overflow of after-hours calls, staff burnout, and overall inefficiency. Centralized triage improves patient access to care while taking the burden off the branch clinicians.
This approach creates flexible triage coverage that can take care of call overflow and improve patient satisfaction across the board for home health and hospice branches. With a centralized triage team, you can provide a 24/7 call center staffed with trained clinicians who act as a single point of contact for patients who need quick access to medical assistance and information (NISOS).
Centralized triage teams can take advantage of advanced platforms and software solutions to streamline patient interactions and create seamless communication among clinicians. With integrated telephony technologies, providers can track phone call volume and purpose, ensuring that patient calls are routed and answered in the most efficient, personalized way possible for patient care.
The right technological infrastructure is an important factor in ensuring efficient communication between healthcare systems and promoting a cohesive approach to triage that spans the healthcare organization. For example, EMR-integrated mobile applications and telehealth platforms help to further centralize triage by allowing patient calls to be routed to nurses available to help rather than forcing those currently caring for a patient to take an incoming call. Pairing this technology with patient task management, active follow-up and secure messaging will prevent common miscommunications and open task loops–redefining care delivery for everyone involved.
Centralizing triage is paving the way for enhanced patient care and improved satisfaction. Since patients appreciate quick and easy access to their providers, a centralized triage team will add flexibility into the home health and hospice space by addressing patient needs rapidly, regardless of how busy a provider is. With first-call resolution as the objective, staffing resources are optimized to reduce response times and direct appropriate care so that patients don’t get passed around.
Centralized triage teams give patients the opportunity to discuss their symptoms and concerns with trained triage nurses, who can advise them, suggest over-the-counter remedies, or order medications and supplies from the comfort of their own homes. This approach ensures the appropriate level of care occurs before needs arise and avoids further after-hours calls and expensive hospital and ER visits. The result is a patient-centric approach, where patients experience not only timely interventions but also a seamless and efficient healthcare journey. Centralizing triage reshapes healthcare with a focus on responsiveness, personalized quality care, and improved patient satisfaction.
There are many benefits to centralizing triage for home health and hospice providers. From minimizing administrative burdens on clinicians, to assessing the level of care needed for patients, it customizes triage needs according to size and specifics of the provider. Whether your organization is handling a small caseload or managing a larger patient population, centralized triage is organized and flexible enough to adjust resources based on demand, contributing to cost-effective and sustainable care delivery.
For providers, the ability to route non-clinical calls to less costly staff members not only opens availability but also allows clinical staff to operate at the top of their license, focusing on tasks that align with their passion for care. This promotes job satisfaction and increases the overall effectiveness of your clinical team.
Analytics also plays an important role here. By tracking patient interaction types, clinicians can gain a better understanding of what kinds of patient calls are coming in and when. This information can then be used to proactively take care of patient needs, such as medications or medical supplies, during regular business hours instead of after hours, when it’s much more inconvenient for patients and more expensive for providers.
Partnering with an expert in centralized triage is key to a seamless transition for both patients and providers. This avoids common pitfalls when hastily bolting new technology onto existing systems and focuses on syncing technology within clinical workflow needs. Here are more benefits of partnering with experts:
As home health and hospice organizations consider implementing centralized triage, partnering with seasoned professionals fosters a reflective, thoughtful, and strategic approach to elevating patient care.
Centralized triage improves staff performance by using call recordings and reporting to identify training opportunities. At CareXM is the kind of experienced clinical partner you can count on to deliver the help you need to elevate your patient and caregiver experiences. Our mission is to help our partners effortlessly anticipate and respond to patient needs with triage technology backed by our on-demand triage team. Whether you need after-hours triage, our cost-saving hybrid triage solutions, or in-house triage call center infrastructure, we help you flex and extend your care so you reach patients in the moments they need help the most. From home health and hospice to health systems and more, CareXM will transform your patient approach to lower operating costs.