It is important to note that healthcare and delivery of health services not only requires competent healthcare professionals but appropriate and efficient management of resources as well. Phone triage is a process of ensuring that a patient receives the care he or she needs in a prompt, timely, and organized manner. Thus, an efficient phone triage in a patient-centered format involves gathering individual data, determining the level of urgency, checking the availability of health professionals, and scheduling the visit.
In order to properly understand the intricacies and complexities of the phone triage process, it is useful to define it first. Telephone triage is a methodological framework for managing a call from a patient, determining the resources required, and timing the appointment based on the level of urgency and staff availability. In other words, it is a patient-centered process designed to ensure that each patient receives healthcare services appropriately. An example of an efficient phone triage would be in emergency departments or ERs, where the four levels of categorization are used. These range from the most urgent at a resuscitation level, followed by emergent, urgent, and less urgent or non-urgent. For instance, a patient with a heart attack would be given the highest level of urgency, and an ER team would be deployed to his or her location immediately to conduct the resuscitation.
In conclusion, phone triage is about the efficient use of resources aimed to ensure that each patient receives the care he or she needs in a prompt, timely, and organized manner. An efficient triage is conducted in four steps, such as gathering individual data, determining the level of urgency, checking the availability of health professionals, and scheduling the visit. In the ER setting, efficiency is key for health outcomes, where the highest priority is given to patients in need of resuscitation.