Nurse telehealth is a combination of remote services available to help patients get the care they need. These include nurse triage, where nurses evaluate patient symptoms over the phone to determine whether they require a physician’s diagnosis; remote patient monitoring, where nurses evaluate patient vitals to look for warning signs of underlying health conditions; determining telehealth eligibility for patients to meet remotely with their physicians, and scheduling those telehealth appointments.

The Schmitt-Thompson protocols are the gold standard of triage protocols developed by Doctors Barton Schmitt and David Thompson. They are used by telehealth nurses for dispositions on patient care. Nurses use the protocols to address patient symptoms and their levels of severity over the phone in order to determine if those patients can manage their care at home, through a primary care office visit, or at the ER.

As a pediatrician, Barton Schmitt, MD contributes to office-hours and after-hours protocols focused on child symptoms and severity. He wrote the first book in this area back in 1980, and currently serves as Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Specializing in internal and emergency medicine, David Thompson, MD contributes to those same protocols by addressing adult symptoms. He’s published several medical articles that focus on patient satisfaction and chief complaint coding, and currently serves part-time with the faculty at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department.

These protocols are reviewed regularly as new medical information becomes available. For example, they were updated weekly during the COVID pandemic to address symptoms and vaccine-related questions. They’re also evaluated and updated annually by an independent board of physicians and nurses with experience in telephone triage, as well as from periodic recommendations made by doctors that use them.

The authors of these triage protocols charge a licensing fee in order to access them. However, TriageLogic offers a 30-day free trial to allow physicians to evaluate them. Contact us to get started.

Yes. We currently offer both versions to any healthcare provider that needs them. The office-hours protocols are more appropriate for daytime use, when doctors are in and available to see patients if needed. After-hours protocols are longer, more extensive, and more detailed so that responding nurses can make decisions even when a doctor is not available. Contact us to get started.

Yes, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, protocols have been updated to allow telehealth nurses to verify patient telehealth eligibility and schedule telehealth appointments with their providers.

TriageLogic is a URAC-accredited, physician-led provider of top-quality nurse telehealth technology, remote patient monitoring, and medical call center solutions. Founded in 2007, the TriageLogic Group now serves more than 9,000 physicians and covers over 25 million lives nationwide.

Providers will have greater phone-based coverage when it comes to addressing daytime and after-hours patient calls and concerns. This translates to fewer unnecessary ER visits, lives saved, and reduced healthcare costs. (See our ebook for more information.)

RPM is the at-home monitoring of chronically ill patients through the use of wearable devices. These typically track essential vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose levels, oxygen saturation and temperature, but may also be used to record weight, patient activity, and sleep. Their purpose is to alert doctors to any significant health changes so that those providers can intervene before their patients require immediate care. 

RPM produces a high volume of data that needs to be reviewed regularly. Nurses also need to contact patients who present abnormal readings to determine if a doctor’s intervention is necessary. Outsourcing both to TriageLogic relieves healthcare providers from managing them internally.

CMS has approved reimbursements of $120 per patient per month. If 50 patients are enrolled, that’s $72,000 in revenue per year. For more information, read the article on insurance reimbursements for remote patient monitoring.

This is nurse triage software that telehealth nurses can use when addressing patient caller symptoms. It incorporates Schmitt-Thompson protocols, documents all caller interactions, and shares this data with a provider’s in-house EHR.

This is an outsourced nurse telehealth service available to any healthcare provider, serving as an extension to their practice by answering patient calls and addressing their concerns. It operates through TriageLogic’s clinical call center, and is available 24/7.