In today’s world, the rapidly evolving healthcare industry has placed its focus on providing access to high quality, patient-centric care, with an unprecedented emphasis on cost containment and continuum of care. Companies, communities, and medical professionals are challenged with the overwhelming task of balancing quality care with new cost initiatives.
The Need for Call Center Solutions Has Never Been Greater
The TeamHealth Medical Call Center (THMCC) is the premier provider of safe, professional, 24-hour medical call center solutions. THMCC provides its client partners with a wide range of cost-effective healthcare services, including:
RN Telephone Triage
- Services are branded to each practice with the ability to gather pertinent data and customize a documentation system that allows practices to drive specific directives for both pediatric and adult populations.
- Another key feature is the ability to integrate patient information into EMRs to meet Patient Centered Medical Home and ACO requirements.
- THMCC registered nurses use Schmitt/Thompson Clinical Content Triage Guidelines for both pediatric and adult populations.
- Services also include post-triage appointment scheduling and a wide range of post-discharge transitional care initiatives
Pediatric Triage
Providing high quality pediatric nurse triage requires a special skill set beyond standard care provisions. TeamPeds addresses this need by directing pediatric patients to an RN staff specially trained in pediatric telephone triage. The TeamPeds program includes:
- Specialized RN pediatric training and competency testing
- Ongoing required monthly pediatric in-service requirements for RNs
- Ability to email care advice
- Error-free provider on call system
- TeamPeds RN supervisor
- Pediatric medical director
- Pediatric QI program
Nurse Advice Lines
Nurse advice lines and community lines can direct your patient population to the most appropriate level of care, while promoting your service’s nurse advice lines can be used to offer branded healthcare and program information that promotes a healthy community and creates an awareness of an organization’s centers of excellence or specialty programs. Reporting and data collection features also provides you with valuable information about the healthcare needs of your population.
Additional benefits of a THMCC community or nurse advice line include:
- Readmission prevention or appropriate care utilization
- Patient acquisition
- Revenue reconciliation reporting
- Branded EXITcare or customized health information emailed to callers
- Web-based branded online self-triage program
- Appointment scheduling and physician referrals
A dedicated ED nurse advice line or triage service helps hospitals respond to calls from patients with inquiries concerning their need for emergency care. THMCC ED nurse advice and triage line services:
- Provide access for callers questioning their need for an ED visit
- Promote appropriate ED utilization
- Prevents unnecessary readmissions
- Provides opportunity to refer other services within system
- Eliminates the risk of ED handling clinical questions
- Allows clinical ED staff to stay focused on in-house patient care
- Refer all real-time call records on callers to the ED
Transitional Care
In many cases, the provision of care is not complete when the patient visit or hospital stay ends. THMCC partners with healthcare providers to develop relationships with patients that support care plan compliance long after they return home.
Transitional care management means preparing patients for their first visit and then accompanying them through post-visit follow-up and post-hospital care. THMCC’s post-discharge call-back services are fully customizable to the needs of specific patient populations, and include:
- Outbound daily call campaigns for both clinical and non-clinical populations
- Specialized scripting utilized for high-risk patients
- Inpatient and ED patient population
- EMR access available
- All calls performed 24-48 hours post-discharge
- Optional callback line for patients experiencing symptoms
The value of these transitional care efforts can be measured in ROI in the following areas:
- Readmission prevention
- Improvement in HCAHPS scores
- Daily escalations/interventions
- Monthly reporting including: Core indicator analysis for medications, discharge instructions, and follow-up appointments; positive/negative trending items; recognition; and patient satisfaction
Avoidable readmissions are a major financial problem for the nation’s healthcare system. For patients, hospitalizations alone are stressful, even more so when they result in subsequent readmissions. THMCC’s outbound call campaign services are specifically designed for high-risk patients, and include:
- Initial post-discharge call within 24-48 hours, with an additional four calls at weekly intervals
- Assessment of patient’s understanding and compliance to medication, discharge instructions, follow-up appointments, and current symptoms
- Optional callback line for patients experiencing symptoms
Physician Answering Services
With ever-increasing workloads and patient care responsibilities, physician burnout is a real concern for hospitals, healthcare organizations, and private practices. The stress of a work/life imbalance can lower physician job satisfaction and hinder physician recruitment.
Delegating the workload to a specialized team of medical professionals can significantly reduce physician burnout. We must realize that to take care of our patients, we must also take care of our providers. Partnering with the TeamHealth Medical Call Center and our team of telephone triage RNs can provide the proper work/life balance for your physicians, which in turn, will mean the best possible care for your patients.
THMCC offers physician and practice answering services to provide seamless access for clinical and non-clinical calls. Patient coordinators deliver a high level of customer service and are supervised by an RN. Features include:
- After hours, daytime support or 24/7 options
- Emergency backup for unscheduled closures
- High volume overflow
- Translation services
- Branded services
- Customized scripting
- Customized directives and protocols
- Error-free paging system
- Secure electronic messaging through TeamDoc Mobile, a web-based application
- All calls are recorded
- Robust reporting
Creating Successful, Long-Term Client Relationships Is Our Goal
The TeamHealth Medical Call Center enters into true partnerships with clients to provide the individual service offering, with measurable results, and to develop a long-term relationship. Our technology allows us to meet the needs of the changing healthcare industry while we continue to make the patient experience our primary focus.
Founded by a team of physicians more than twenty-two years ago, the THMCC has the unique advantage of having a provider perspective in each aspect of the services we provide. We understand the special bond between physician and patient. Like our clients, we value each caller as an individual who deserves a clinically correct and caring response from our staff to ensure a positive experience, which adds value to their relationship with our clients.
With more than twenty-two years of experience and eleven million triage calls, there is no doubt the TeamHealth Medical Call Center’s medical call center solutions can serve a vital role in your patient care coordination efforts. Call 844-277-6312 or visit us at www.TeamHealthCallCenter.com to learn more.