Sabin M
Steamboat Springs Healthcare Association, CO, USA.
Healthc Financ Manage. 1998 Aug;52(8):49-51.
Telephone triage, or telephone advice counseling, is becoming a key managed care point-of-entry tool for patients and health plan members accessing the health system. Telephone triage functions as a logical front-end for health plans, integrated physician groups, or integrated delivery systems that want to shift their managed care efforts toward demand management. Key components of telephone triage include patient education, patient information, and guided access to appropriate care. Telephone triage generally requires 24-hour staffing by registered nurses and a computer software package based on either clinical protocols or clinical algorithms. Organizations can either install an in-house system or purchase this service from a vendor, health plan, or another provider. The decision to develop a telephone triage service in-house or to out-source it is determined largely by volume and the user's strategy for moving to successive levels of risk management.
电话分诊，即电话咨询辅导，正成为患者和健康计划成员接入医疗系统的关键管理式医疗切入点工具。对于希望将管理式医疗工作转向需求管理的健康计划、整合医生团队或整合式医疗服务体系而言，电话分诊起到了逻辑前端的作用。电话分诊的关键组成部分包括患者教育、患者信息以及引导患者获得适当的护理。电话分诊通常需要注册护士24小时值班，并配备基于临床协议或临床算法的计算机软件包。机构可以自行安装内部系统，也可以从供应商、健康计划或其他提供商处购买此项服务。自行开发还是外包电话分诊服务，很大程度上取决于业务量以及用户向更高层次风险管理推进的策略。
