After-Hours Triage Services
Redefining Access to Care
At 3 a.m., a baby’s fever can worry a new mom or dad. So much so, they may consider a trip to the nearest emergency department (ED) entirely prudent.
The question is: Is it truly necessary?
With Conduit’s Health Partners’ Nurse-First Triage Services, the answer is just a quick phone call away. This value-driven service gives your patients, employees and members the assistance and support they need during those hours and days when their usual health care provider is unavailable. It offers trusted medical advice and peace of mind while reducing unnecessary ED visits and helping reign in health care costs.
Nurse Triage Benefits for Health Plans
Health plans recognize that members sometimes need help navigating today’s complex healthcare system and its many options — Telehealth? Office visit? Treat at home? Urgent care? Emergency department or room (ED or ER)?
Nurse triage services — sometimes called nurse lines — support members in making the right choices for their care based on evidence-based protocols. As a result, nurse triage services help:
- Lower healthcare costs for both members and health plans.
- Reduce unnecessary emergency department visits.
- Prevent avoidable readmissions of members newly discharged from the hospital.
- Improve access to care wherever members are and at any time of the day.
- Enhance member satisfaction.
- Diminish disparities in healthcare caused by socioeconomic status, geography and uneven health literacy.
Further, nurse triage services by Conduit Health Partners can support members who speak languages other than English (300 languages, in fact), so they can help direct all your members to the appropriate providers.
Quality Nurse Triage for Health Plans
Avoid Unnecessary ED Visits
How a Midwestern health plan increased emergency department avoidance by nearly 90% among members who called nurse triage services.
Offer Immediate Access to Care
When members know they can call a number and be connected immediately to a nurse, the effect is remarkable, according to Conduit Health Partners’ president and co-founder.
Measure & Track Results
Numbers matter to health plan leaders, and Conduit Health Partners helps you measure and track progress toward your goals.
At Conduit Health Partners, our co-founder and many of our leaders began their careers in nursing.
We understand how well nurses can connect with commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plan members, earn their trust and see that they get the care they need.
- With our nurse triage services, experienced and licensed RNs answer members’ calls around the clock, 365 days a year.
- They use evidence-based decision-support tools (the Schmitt-Thompson protocols) to evaluate members’ situations.
- Using the health plan’s network and range of services, triage nurses direct members to the appropriate care.
- Health plans can access daily reports of calls and dispositions so care managers or medical teams can follow up with members and their healthcare providers.
Conduit Health Partners nurse-first triage is URAC-accredited, so you can be confident of the quality of support your members receive. Members appreciate that their health plan is invested in their well-being and makes it easy for them to reach a nurse 24/7/365.
Our Results Attest to Our Effectiveness and Quality
Our clinical team works closely with you and provides access to detailed reports on calls and resolutions. Experiences with large organizations nationwide have led to solid results and satisfied patients and members.
Convenient after-hours access to clinical expertise
It’s not unusual for people’s most pressing medical concerns to arise after regular business hours. Anxiety and worry magnify when someone isn’t sure where to turn. Our Nurse-First Triage Services help you address your clients’ concerns after hours and better meet their needs.
Experienced registered nurses handle every call from the start and initiate their assessment immediately. The majority of calls are answered within 30 seconds; providing callers a positive experience and preventing hang-ups.
URAC-Accredited Health Call Center
Working out of our URAC-accredited health call center, our nurses use Schmitt-Thompson protocols to evaluate each caller’s symptoms and situation. These evidence-based decision support tools, considered the gold standard of nurse telehealth triage guidelines, cover nearly 350 pediatric and 400 adult topics.
The protocols and the nurses’ own clinical expertise allow them to answer callers’ questions, offer advice, ease their fears and direct them to the most suitable and cost-effective level of care — including preferred and in-network providers when appropriate. The nurses can even expedite care by contacting a provider or emergency department on the caller’s behalf. We customize your solution to your organization’s culture, footprint and goals.
The best part for your patients and members: We make our services available any time of night (or day), even on weekends and holidays. The people in your care get the help and support they need when and where they need it.
Results Speak For Themselves
Undoubtedly, fewer emergency department visits will increase your satisfaction, too. Each avoided visit equals cost savings for employers, health plans and ED providers. In one case, a Conduit client saw its ED avoidance rate increase to nearly 90% after partnering with us. An average emergency department visit costs $1,200 to $1,400, and the cost of telehealth nurse triage is just $30, so it’s easy to see the value.
For provider practices, partnering with us may also improve employee satisfaction. As an extension of your team providing after-hours support, we can help address issues relative to retention and recruitment. Our Nurse-First Triage Services lift the burden on your on-call staff and lower the risk of in-office staff burnout. Nurse-first triage program also offer a solution to ease ED crowding by offering more appropriate care settings for those with non-emergent issues.
Benefits of After-Hours Triage
An after-hours triage solution offers tremendous benefits. There’s no substitute for the relief callers feel when they know a clinical expert has assessed their condition and recommended the most appropriate care. Very often, that won’t require a trip to the ED. So, callers are grateful to avoid what’s typically the costliest and frequently most time-consuming care. Their sense of relief and time-savings may increase their satisfaction.
Learn more about how Conduit enhances health care access and efficiency
Whether helping frightened new parents or supporting your on-call staff, implementing an after-hours triage service will not only improve patient access and satisfaction by extending the care you offer after-hours but enables you to reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and position yourself as a leader in the evolving healthcare industry.
Conduit’s Nurse-First Triage Service may be just what you are looking for. Learn more about the value of providing Nurse Triage Services and how it can be the right solution for you. For questions or more details about this service, we invite you to connect with our team who specializes in healthcare services.
Helping Health Plans Outsource Nurse Triage Lines
The advent of managed care 50 years ago touched off the evolution of health plans from claims processing businesses to organizations that partner with members and healthcare providers to produce better outcomes and manage costs.
Today, healthcare’s challenges are amplified by shortages of doctors and nurses, prompting new approaches to resourcing and the decisions by many health plans to outsource services like nurse triage.
Outsourcing nurse triage services to Conduit Health Partners helps health plans:
- Save on staffing, continuous training and extensive technology needed to operate nurse triage services.
- Address the shortage of qualified RNs nationally and particularly among under-served populations.
- Gain a specialized partner that ensures triage nurses receive regular training to maintain competency to ensure top-quality care.
It’s no wonder that outsourcing is a growing trend among health plans of all kinds — self-insured and fully-insured commercial plans and government-supported Medicare and Medicaid plans.
Choose a Leading Nurse Triage Company for Your Health Plan
Conduit Health Partners understands the healthcare system from all angles – providers, payers and patients. By tapping the clinical expertise of RNs, we connect everyone in a circle of caring dedicated to delivering better outcomes at lower costs.
Our leadership team is made up of experienced nurses and healthcare administrators committed to helping health plans:
- Lower costs by helping members get the right level of care without delay.
- Avoid inappropriate ED use and the associated costs for members and health plans.
- Improve healthcare access for members affected by disparities in the healthcare system.
- Boost member satisfaction and health literacy.
- Enhance the plan’s reputation among its customers and within the markets it serves.
Learn More About Conduit's Nurse Triage Services
RELATED NEWS
Why Nurse-First Triage Matters: The Key to Patient Safety and Satisfaction
In health care, the first point of contact is critical. When patients call for clinical advice, especially in urgent or uncertain situations, they need timely, expert guidance. Nurse-first triage models stand out because they place clinically trained professionals—nurses—at the forefront of this process.
Enhancing Patient Safety with Conduit’s Nurse-First Triage: A Solution for Medical Groups
Patient safety and streamlined operations are critical for any medical group, but achieving this balance can be challenging. This is where Conduit Health Partners’ nurse-first triage solution becomes invaluable. Take Kenosha Community Health Center (KCHC) as an example—a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that turned to Conduit to address critical gaps in their patient care process.
Enhancing Patient Care Through Innovative Solutions
In a recent interview with RamaOnHealthcare, Dominique Wells, chief operating officer at Conduit Health Partners, shares insights on improving patient care through strategic innovations. With a rich background in nursing and health care technology,
When you hire nurse triage from Conduit Health Partners, your team includes an account manager dedicated to your organization and a team of experts in clinical care, call center operations and technology.
We serve hundreds of thousands of individuals nationwide through our contracts with employers, health plans, hospitals and medical practices. We’d welcome discussing how we might help your health plan.
Contact us for a no-obligation consultation
Call us at 855-605-2833 or fill out our form to schedule a meeting with a member of our leadership team.
1 2023 Conduit Health Partners Triage Service (combined clients)
2Based on a panel of 50,000 individuals with 5% utilization of Conduit Health Partners nurse-first triage. The total savings was $250,000 on a $75,000 investment in the service.
3 2023 Conduit Health Partners Post Call Survey (combined clients)
4 Assuming 71% of ED visits are unnecessary, and an average ED visit costs $1,250, a health plan or self-insured employer can save $88,750 per 100 contacts with nurse-first triage.
Frequently Asked Questions about Nurse Triage Call Centers for Health Plans
Few professionals are as admired and trusted as nurses. Health plans understand that and operate nurse lines to help direct their members to professionals they trust so they can get the proper care.
Nursing shortages, however, have made it more difficult for health plans to staff their triage nurse lines 24/7/365. At the same time, health plans recognize that economies of scale make it wise to consider an outsourced solution like Conduit Health Partners for nurse triage services.
By providing members with a phone number to triage nurse services, health plans can see that members are evaluated using evidence-based protocols and directed to the right level of care.
Many times, however, there are more appropriate options, such as in-network telehealth, urgent care, appointments with their specialty or primary care providers or informed home care.
One sizeable Midwestern health plan used nurse triage services and:
- Improved ED avoidance by nearly 90%.
- Earned a 96% member satisfaction rating.
Overuse of the emergency department is a widely acknowledged driver of costs in the healthcare system, adding billions of dollars unnecessarily to healthcare costs.
By one estimate, 71% of ED visits are unnecessary. Assuming an average ED visit cost of $1,250, a health plan can save $88,750 per 100 contacts with nurse-first triage. Based on a panel of 50,000 members, we estimated a 3:1 return on investment in nurse triage services.
Of course, every health plan’s membership is different. That’s why Conduit Health Partners works with health plans to evaluate when and how its members may be misusing emergency services and work collaboratively to develop possible solutions and metrics by which those solutions will be evaluated.
Not all members have a primary care provider they know and trust. Some members may live in areas with few options, like urgent care or walk-in clinics, to use when they get sick or injured.
However, all members have a phone they can use to reach a triage nurse. Health plans that activate their membership to call their nurse lines when they have questions can reap the benefits of lower healthcare costs and higher member satisfaction.
The challenges of health care today are leading more payers (health plans) to form alliances through outsourcing with various healthcare services, including nurse triage services, remote patient monitoring and member outreach and engagement.
With their years of experience in various healthcare settings, Conduit Health Partners’ leaders understand the value of everyone invested in member health and safety collaborating in novel ways. We think of ourselves as “smokejumpers” who are fearless in attacking healthcare’s most perplexing challenges with vigor and hope.