Telephone Triage (Excerpted from an article in the 2/2/07 issue of Medical Economics)
Your telephone is frequently answered by a nonclinical staff member. They often do not know what to say, what questions to ask and what action to take. They often do not know what is important and what is not. As a result, precious time is expended in conversations that are longer than necessary and/or call backs by medical assistants or nurses. The solution is to train nonclinical staff and provide written guidelines on handling both routine and urgent phone calls. Here is a three-step process to accomplish that job:
1. Gather information. Conduct an office-wide brainstorming session. Have staff members discuss the types of calls they receive. Have the medical staff explain how they want specific calls and situations handled. You might even poll new and established patients to find out how they feel urgent calls are being handled. And don't forget about the handling of routine calls for appointments, billing or insurance questions and lab results. Each doctor within your practice must explain, in detail, how referral calls from other doctors are to be handled and personal calls for them. Doctors need to spell out how they want different appointments scheduled. For instance, if a caller complains of mild chest pain, some doctors may want same-day appointments, some may want them scheduled for a long appointment and some may want them sent to emergency.
2. Draft written guidelines. Once the information has been gathered, put it in writing. Draw up written guidelines that explain how to handle the various calls for the specific doctors in easy-to-understand language. You may even want to consult the book Telephone Triage Protocol for Nurses by Julie K. Briggs (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006).
3. Practice Actual Scripts. Conduct periodic meetings and utilize role-play to practice the handling of various types of calls - both urgent and routine. Remember, the nonclinical staff person should not respond to requests for medical advice. Their goal is to extract pertinent information for transmittal to the medical professional. Typically a telephone clerk's duty does not need to go further than collecting the caller's major signs and symptoms, unless the doctor requires more information. Aside from collecting the information, the clerk's only other duty is to be empathetic and reassuring.
Posts
