Good afternoon!
We are on the Epic journey and having discussions in our ambulatory environment about incorporating Telephone Triage Nurses into our Primary Care structure which would be new for our organization. I am working with the Epic team and had been asked to do some research around this. I was introduced to the Schmidtt-Thompson Clinical Content by our Epic team and saw a brief demonstration. I did search and read through several prior conversations around this product in these blogs and did not see any real concerns mentioned. Does anyone have any more recent concerns about this product? It seems well-researched, evidenced-based and solid in its content. Also, the question was brought to me about using the "no or negative" functionality". It seems safe but would value any feedback around that as well.
Also, for those that use telephone triage nurses, do your triage nurses cover just the primary care offices? Or do they cover specialty offices as well? How do you determine the number of FTEs needed? We are considering a 1-tier process - calls being routed directly to or answered directly by the triage nurses. Considering starting with the Primary Care backline calls that are currently not being answered timely but instead most often waiting for the providers to respond.
I value any feedback around any of these topics. Thank you in advance for your time and advice. I know many of you have had telephone triage nurses for years.
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Karol Edwards MHA, RN, NE-BC
CNO, Ambulatory Services
MedStar Health
Columbia, MD
410-746-2430
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