Telehealth Articles

How to Manage Patient Calls Based on the Size and Needs of Your Organization As a practice manager or doctor, managing patient calls effectively is critical in ensuring high-quality, well-coordinated care for every patient. The first step is to make sure that the people answering your phones triage patients efficiently and effectively. Establishing a consistent nurse triage system will improve the way you manage patient

 Keeping Your Staff Healthy You work hard at ensuring your patients have all of the tools that they need to stay healthy. What about your staff? When it comes to employee healthcare, a lot of companies take the preventive approach, such as implementing programs and challenges that focus on losing weight or quitting smoking. Having a program that can combine all of your company’s benefits

Accountable Care Organizations Can Decrease Unnecessary Patient Expenses with Nurse Triage  Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are designed to encourage high-quality and less expensive treatments for patients. As a provider, you receive a reward if your patients stay out of expensive care and expensive hospitals. Similar incentives for providers are emerging from insurance companies as well. There are many strategies your practice can implement to reach

Tips for Triage Nurses and Telehealth Professionals with Anxious Callers  Anxiety is as individual and personalized as pain is.  Any medical professional, for instance a triage nurse, will tell you, “Pain is what the patient says it is.”  Anxiety is similar, as it is hard to determine how an individual will react to situations.  Sometimes, what the nurse may perceive as a small “inconvenience” is

Engaging Patients During a Nurse Triage Call and Developing Trust  The nurse-patient relationship is one that is like no other. On any telehealth call, such as a nurse triage call, two strangers must somehow find a way to communicate and trust each other in a very short period of time. Like other relationships, this one is built on trust and communication. However, unlike other relationships,

A Customized Follow-up Plan to Reduce Hospital Readmissions When patients get discharged after a hospital visit, it can be difficult for them to follow or remember discharge instructions. This can lead to higher readmission rates, longer recovery times, and overall lower quality of patient satisfaction. Read these tips to see how a customized post discharge follow-up care plan will reduce patient readmissions. Did you know?

Charting by Exception –Triage Patients Efficiently in Your Medical Call Center When triaging patients in your medical call center, charting by exception is the most efficient way to ensure that your triage nurses quickly reach the correct protocol. At TriageLogic, we use the gold-standard Schmitt-Thompson protocols and chart by exception based on the author’s recommendation for safe triage care. Charting by exception is a shorthand method for documenting

Decrease Medical Liability with Effective Documentation of Patient Calls By Charu Raheja, PhD   Many patient interactions begin with a phone call. Often, physicians and medical professionals provide medical care and instructions to patients over the phone. Unlike office visits, there is often a lack of documentation of the communication between the healthcare provider and patient. If there is a misunderstanding or a negative patient

Triaging Elderly Patients By Nurse Manager, Marci Lawing, RN, BSN Telephone triage nurses have an extra challenge when working with the elderly. Triage nurses are not able to see their patients, communicating via the telephone, and that can sometimes be less than ideal. Phone connection issues can make the conversation even more challenging. Along with the fact that the patient may be hard of hearing

What Makes a Good Telephone Triage Nurse By Marci Lawing, RN, BSN Telephone Triage Nurses are a special breed. Evaluating an individual’s symptoms over the phone presents a unique challenge. Think of working in an ER without your sense of vision, smell, or touch. Nurses are taught to use all five senses when triaging patients. However, take away four of those senses and it becomes

Improve Nursing Staff Training and Patient Care with myTriageChecklist® For over six years, hundreds doctors’ offices have relied on TriageLogic’s myTriageChecklist® to determine and document the appropriate level of care when their patients call with symptoms. MyTriageChecklist provides a convenient and reliable, web-based solution for offices looking to increase their quality of patient care. Using Schmitt-Thompson, the gold standard for telephone triage, myTriageChecklist helps ensure