How to Improve After-Hours Triage in Home Health and Hospice

If you’re reading this, you already know that after-hours care plays a significant role in patient satisfaction, quality scores, and staff well-being. One service failure or missed call in the after-hours can undo months of outstanding care.

Is your on-call nurse juggling patient visits with triaging calls? Or maybe your after-hours process relies on voicemail, which forces your clinicians to sift through messages instead of responding directly to urgent patient needs. Wherever the gap lies, it’s not just the patient experience at stake. It’s your team’s well-being.

If you suspect there’s room for improvement but aren’t sure where you should start, the first step is understanding what after-hours care looks like at your organization.

What the data tells us about after-hours triage

At CareXM, we analyze more home health and hospice triage data than any other post-acute partner. Here’s what we’ve found in the after-hours:

• 65-70% of after-hours calls are related to a change in patient status or symptom management. These are the call types you should expect and want to see in the after-hours.

• 30-35% of after-hours calls are avoidable. Common examples of these avoidable calls include medication refill requests, DME coordination, or supply needs.

These non-urgent needs matter and are an important part of the patient’s experience, but they’re not always urgent, and they don’t always belong in the after-hours workload.

What avoidable after-hours calls are really costing you

That 30-35% of non-urgent after-hours calls doesn’t just affect patient wait times; it creates a ripple effect that causes real operational strain, regardless of whether you have a dedicated triage team in the after-hours or it’s your on-call nurse that triages calls. These non-urgent calls create avoidable workload, increase coordination needs with the daytime team, and pull attention away from direct patient care.

Consider what that actually looks like. Nurses shifting between in-person visits and triage calls or sorting through voicemail to determine who to care for first. It’s a reactive way to care for a vulnerable population, and that kind of multitasking wears down clinical judgment, increases the risk of errors, and is a driving factor in nurse burnout and turnover.

On top of that, avoidable calls inflate your after-hours volume and make it harder to staff appropriately. You end up planning for peak call volume that could’ve been reduced with better daytime workflows. That means burning resources on issues that don’t belong in the after-hours window, which costs you time, talent, and money.

Rethinking your after-hours care model

You don’t need a full operational overhaul to improve after-hours care. Small changes in how you manage triage can make a big difference for both patients and staff. Start by asking,

• Is your daytime team proactively resolving issues that might otherwise roll into the evening?

• Are non-urgent needs like refills and supply requests being identified and addressed before the end of the day? If not, how does your team identify patient needs that would result in a non-urgent call?

• Do your nurses have support after-hours, or are they fielding incoming calls while making visits?

If answering those questions feels tough, start by getting a clearer picture of your after-hours call volume. Are you seeing similar trends as we are, where 30-35% of calls aren’t urgent?

If your team is stretched thin as it is, outsourcing triage may be a better path than hiring additional after-hours staff. A clinical triage partner like CareXM gives you flexible nurse triage support without adding internal overhead, especially when after-hours volume is unpredictable.

CareXM’s triage nurses follow your protocols, escalate only when needed, absorb the volume your staff can’t handle in real time, and coordinate care with your visit nurses. That means your nurses can focus on the most urgent priorities, and patients get timely support regardless of the time they call.

How triage data can guide your strategy

This is where visibility into triage call types and patterns is important. When you can see what’s coming in after hours and which of those calls were avoidable, you can begin to build a smarter triage strategy.

For example, if you’re seeing a spike in refill requests at 7 p.m., that’s a signal to tighten up med reconciliation workflows during the day. If supply calls are coming in on Saturdays, it may be worth revisiting delivery schedules or patient education around proper supply usage.

When you combine this kind of data with intentional workflows and reliable nurse triage support, your team is no longer guessing or reacting. They’re supported, focused, and ready to deliver the right care at the right time.

If the after-hours still feels overwhelming, you’re not alone.

We’ve helped home health and hospice organizations of all sizes take control of their after-hours. Contact us today to learn how we can help you do the same.