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CAPC Palliative Care Discussion Forum
Designing a Program

Next Reply: Re:Centralized triage for workload management
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Post Centralized triage for workload management
Author: Chirag
Date: Nov 28, 2011 12:09 pm
Hello all. Just wanted to see if anyone out there had a centralized triage system to handle staff deployments throughout the day? We currently provide palliative care service to 4 local hospitals via a hospice supported program. We are expanding, and are considering a centralized triage service to receive all new consults requests, and then tasking appropriate staff to complete those requests.

There are inherent issues with this, as some consult calls come directly from providers, but from an efficiency standpoint, has anyone has any success from this model or would it be better served to have a staffed team member at that hospital/facility field calls and triage work accordingly (what we currently do).

Thanks for taking the time to consider this question.

Chirag Patel
Medical Director for Innovative Care Solutions
Hospice of Dayton
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Re:Centralized triage for workload management (by SharolHerr on 11/28/2011)
Our palliative care services sees patients at three community hospitals in our metropolitan area. The hospitals are 14-17 miles apart. We have a physician led program and all consultations require a physician order as required for consultation by other medical specialities. The process for making the consultation is input by the secretary into the system computer and then placing a call to the palliative care answering service. The new consult is then sent out by the answering service to the clinical team. At each of the facilities we have dedicated staff coverage for the day and the team members at that site pick up on any new consults that come through the system. The answering service works well because it not only gives the hospital staff acces 24/7 to place new consults but also provides a consistent way to reach our staff on call. As your program grows at each site you will most likely need to dedicate a predictable staff and time to each facility. Seeing staff does often promote consults but formalizing the process allows for days off, changing in staff, etc. and can make the referral process more reliable. Sharol Herr, RN, BSN, MSEd, CHPN; Palliative Clinical Manager; Mount Carmel Health Palliative Care Leadership Center; Columbus, Ohio.

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