EMR, EMPI and EHR solutions support quick, accurately identification of a patient and deliver his/her complete health record to the point of care.  For providers, that complete record needs to include telephone encounters.
 
Incorporating the Schmitt-Thompson protocols strengthens your system’s Clinical Decision Support for use by physicians, office staff and after-hours triage nurses. It:

• Offers symptom-based assessment support for use in phone encounters
• Decreases risk by standardizing information and response to patient calls
• Supports priority-based patient scheduling versus first-com, first served.
• Creates a complete record of all encounters

The After Hours protocols are already used by 400 hospital-based medical call centers.  Incorporating a triage function/module to your medical record suite extends documentation to include telephone interactions and adds value to your core product.

The Office Hours protocols, are currently purchased in book format by more than 10,000 physician practices to support their front office.  Integrating this content with the EMR supports capturing valuable pre-visit information, making the physician-patient encounter efficient and documentation more complete. It reduces risk through supporting consistent handling of calls and priority-based patient scheduling.

And with the recent ability for physicians to charge for telephone evaluation and management of patients, it’s more important than ever to track these encounters within the enterprise system.  Be sure your solution supports the assessment and advice steps necessary to capture this revenue source and code it properly (CPTs 99441 through 99444).

New to Triage? STCC consultants have worked in the telephone triage industry for more than 20 years.  They can assist you with content formatting and process flow templates to optimize usability and ease of documentation.