Do Mobile Apps Belong in Telephone Triage?


LVM

By Mark Dwyer

Being a “digital immigrant,” whose knowledge and comfort with mobile apps is admittedly deficient, over the past thirty years I have championed the value of a traditional, phone-based nurse triage call center. If I need clinical help (or vendor assistance, for that matter), I still prefer a phone call to interact with a person.

To me, texting, emailing, tweeting, or communicating by any other non-voice-to-voice method, not only can be cold, impersonal, and incomplete, it is often intimidating. Despite claims to the contrary, the developers of many mobile apps have compromised ease-of-use for faster programming and meeting product release deadlines.

That said, I do see a number of scenarios where having access to a mobile app or other software-based solution offers a real benefit to the consumer and a natural tie-in to today’s nurse triage call center. Let’s begin by looking at a few functions commonly used today in telephone triage call centers to which mobile apps are being interfaced.

The Triage Nurse Callback Queue: The follow-up call queue is of weighty value especially when new patients call and all of the call center nurses are busy speaking with other patients. Here, assuming the call is of a non-critical, low-acuity nature, a non-clinical staff member could advise the patient that no nurse is currently available and he or she would gladly add the patient to the nurses’ callback queue once some initial information is gathered.

Web or Mobile App Requests for a Nurse Follow-up Call: For some, enabling the patient to send a summary of their conditions via a smartphone app would be the logical starting place for a phone app interface. Many hospital call centers have begun accepting this kind of communication.

Using the triage nurse callback queue for outbound calls to the patient enables the nurse to review the text sent via the mobile app. Once reviewed, the nurse calls the patient back to engage in a more in-depth conversation regarding the details of the patient’s symptoms.

As always, if the patient is experiencing critical symptoms, they should always be instructed to hang-up and dial 9-1-1 or proceed to the nearest emergency department.

Prioritizing Calls in the Callback Queue by Acuity: The best way to verify that each call added into the nurse callback queue has been assigned an appropriate acuity level would be to have all calls reviewed, assessed and, if needed, adjusted by acuity. To facilitate this, many sites have a charge nurse responsible for managing the queue throughout the day, making sure the highest acuity requests remain listed at the top of the “requests received for nurse call-back” queue.

But this is an article on mobile apps. Isn’t there a way to review and assign an appropriate acuity level with a technological solution instead of needing to manually review each request using a process that requires the addition of more staff?

Natural Language Processing: A more technologically advanced option would be to utilize one of the industry’s natural language processing (NLP) mobile apps. An NLP system can read, at the time of the initial call, the notes captured by the non-clinical, front-end intake person or directly by a call center nurse. The NLP can then interpret the notes into their clinical equivalents, assess the acuity of the call, and send the call to the follow-up queue or make it available to the nurse, in both cases with the appropriate acuity level.

There are systems that can automatically assign an acuity ranking to each call before adding it to the nurse callback queue. If the call is being handled directly by the call center nurse, this same information can be provided directly to the triage call center nurse to help direct her guideline selection. Doing so substantially reduces the time needed to manage the queue. Instead, the charge nurse could be used to provide greater value to patients by handling additional live triage calls.

Again, if needed, these calls could be assigned a higher or lower acuity level by the charge nurse monitoring the queue. When functioning correctly, the auto-feed, queue-sorting algorithm should take into consideration newly added calls every two to three minutes. Generally, callbacks should be made within thirty to forty minutes of receipt of the initial request.

Live Chat Technology: Another option traditional nurse triage call centers are beginning to embrace is utilizing live chat technology to enable the patient to directly interact with a triage nurse within just a couple of minutes of the initial inquiry. Here, via the chat function on most computers and smartphones, the patient can simply enter a brief description of his or her symptoms and send it to the call center. A triage nurse opens the chat, reads the patient’s notes, and then enters an educational or directive note back to the patient again in the chat window.

The nurse’s reply, along with the patient’s initial message, is returned to the patient for further review. If the patient is satisfied with the nurse’s response, he or she simply closes the open chat link. Otherwise, the chat can continue. Once the final message is sent, click to close the chat window. Be sure to follow organizational HIPAA privacy rules.

Using the chat function can be a great productivity benefit because a single nurse can manage multiple chats simultaneously. Just be sure, if chat is implemented in the call center, clearly segment each caller’s or patient’s data from all others to avoid inappropriately sharing personnel health information (PHI) with the wrong individual.

Self-Assessment via Guided Questions: Another mobile app gaining popularity in the telephone triage world is often referred to as a symptom checker. This app provides patients with the ability to self-assess their symptoms using a web or phone-based app. These programs typically begin by providing instructions for using the app and the site’s privacy rules.

When the patient is ready to begin, two diagrams appear, one male and one female, with several body regions defined (such as upper right leg, lower left leg, neck, etc.). The patient can rotate the body to indicate the concern has something to do with an area on the back. Once the body region is identified, the patient clicks on it to display a list of symptoms from which to choose (for example, muscle ache, sunburn, laceration, etc.).

Typically, these programs present a user-friendly interface with self-triage guidelines or some other healthcare information pertaining to the issue the patient is having. If the patient prefers to speak with a nurse, some of the more advanced symptom checker apps will enable the patient to request a follow-up call from a call center nurse.

The patient’s request is added to the nurses’ follow-up call queue. The process continues from there, processing the request much like the steps for chat follow-up interactions, except that the subsequent contacts take the form of phone calls instead of chat texts.

Photo of Wound: This is a surprisingly simple, yet significant feature of many remote apps tied to triage call centers. One of the greatest challenges of performing remote patient triage is the inability to see the patient’s symptoms or problem visually. By adding the ability to share a photo with the call center nurse, the patient can greatly enhance the nurse’s ability to successfully triage the issue.

It is true. A picture is worth a thousand words. These photos are typically shared as jpg files and are stored as part of the patient’s overall triage encounter record.

Video of Patient Behavior: Another visual tool available from some vendors is the ability to send and store a video of the patient’s behavior. Describing lethargic or manic behavior or the uncontrollable crying or hysterics of a toddler is often difficult for a highly stressed parent. Enabling the nurse to watch a brief video of the patient’s current activities can greatly improve the nurses’ ability to correctly assess the patient’s health issues.

Video-Based Doctor Visits: The last application is a rapidly growing phenomenon that spawned an entire new industry to address what many believe to be one of the greatest challenges of Obamacare: providing insurance coverage to twenty million Americans, while struggling with a major shortage of primary care physicians throughout much of the country.

Through governmental action such as the ACA, millions more Americans were provided government subsidized healthcare. Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals who initially enrolled in the new programs were those of greatest ill health and costliest conditions. These individuals were also largely without a primary care provider. Consequently, the over-crowded, already backed up emergency departments across the country became even more congested with individuals who had nowhere else to go to receive the healthcare they needed to stay alive. Video-based doctor visits provided a partial solution.

The sharpest players in the healthcare triage call center niche will be those who devise a strategy to integrate with these video-based physician practices, performing both pre and post-visit calls and doing follow-up case management calls to these individuals.

The future is here. Either embrace it or miss this current wave—or might it be a tsunami?

LVM Systems logo

Mark Dwyer is a 30-year veteran of the healthcare call center industry. Mark is in his sixteenth year at LVM Systems where he serves as COO. LVM Systems provides healthcare call center software. For more information or a demonstration of LVM’s call center solutions contact Carol Zeek, regional VP, sales, at 480-633-8200 x279 or Leann Delaney, regional VP, sales at 480-633-8200 x286

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