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Patient triage isn't just about forms, it's about matching the demand for and supply of a practice's services. Triaging requests ensures the most appropriate outcome can be reached. This is no easy task.
While the right Online Consultation product is a useful step to addressing this issue, it needs to be paired with the right principles, processes & people.
Simplifying a little:
Demand = the number of patients requests for an appointment. These requests primarily take the form of phone calls or form submissions.
Supply = the number of appointments on offer. These are typically a mixture of clinical appointments with doctors and nurses, but also could be the time of an admin staff member to complete a non-clinical request.
Say we have 100 patient requests to see a GP (Demand), but at our practice, we only have 40 GP, and 20 Nurse appointments to give out (Supply). Sound familiar? We'll have a shortfall of 40 appointments.
Patient triage is the process of sorting through our patient requests to determine which patients need to be seen first, which patients can be seen by a nurse, and which patients don't need to be seen at all!
Done well, our 100 patient requests could be met by providing the 10 requests deemed urgent with the on-call GP, providing 30 with their requested GP, providing 20 with Nurse appointments, referring 10 to the local community pharmacist and referring the remaining 30 to self-help materials. This allows for triaging based on clinical need. Ensuring the most appropriate outcome is reached within the scope of the staff resources available.
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