Good morning to all,
I hope you are well. I am trying to get information on oncology practice centers that have a centralized triage and how you navigate lessening the call to providers in clinics. We currently work with Allscripts and we have a Central Access Center where non-clinical operators answer the first patient call, initiate the triage note and place it on our dashboard for follow-up. We provide triage services to our GI medicine/surgery, Urology medicine/surgery, Leukemia, Endocrine, Endoscopy, Infectious Disease, and Thoracic medicine/surgery outpatient clinics. We have 8 full time nurses in our team to cover calls and our hours are 7am-7pm. Outside of these hours we have an Assessment and Treatment Center (ATC) nurse take over calls. After clinics close at 5pm, we have on call fellows for each service as resources for guiding medical interventions and recommendations.
During clinic hours the triage nurse utilizes the form created by operator to send patient inquiry to the midlevels, whether NP or PA in the clinics and they check their boards throughout the day and have a grading system for urgent or time sensitive calls. The amount of calls that go to midlevels is not ideal and we would like to know if anyone in a cancer focused practice can give us some input as to what is working for you. We do not work off of standing orders or algorithms at this point, but we are trying to create this where attendings for their respective clinic signs off on interventions that the nurses can communicate with the patient without always needing to go to a midlevel. We know we can provide nursing interventions as these are within our scope, but the drawback is trying to figure out how we can navigate calls during clinic hours relieving the burden of calls going to the providers in clinic. If anyone can please share your experience with me that would be wonderful. :)
Thanking you kindly,
Lissette Blandon, MSN Ed., RN
Nurse Triage Team
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
Buffalo, NY 14225
(716) 845-3136
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Lissette Blandon
Administrative Charge RN
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
Buffalo NY
(365)999-2196
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