Reduced Costs and Better Outcomes Necessitate 24-Hour Nurse Triage Hotline Services
By Steve Kelly
In order to make workers’ compensation telephonic nurse triage as easy as possible for the injured worker, much needs to be done behind the scenes by a triage provider. Major elements, including staffing a call center, creating medical protocols, intake and report distribution systems, and integrating these and other systems is a significant endeavor for anyone wishing to provide a triage service. The daunting details involved in establishing a triage program – which we have mastered over 18 years’ experience – have provided Company Nurse the opportunity to partner with firms in other areas of workers’ compensation, by offering a co-brand or “white label” triage service to their clients.
It was about four years ago that I had started to be approached frequently by representatives in several industries in the workers’ compensation arena – carriers, brokers, TPAs, managed care providers – about collaborating for a co-branded or white labeled nurse triage hotline. In many cases, these were major players who had clients already using our services, with other current and prospective clients requesting and looking for a similar service.
Try as they might to make it happen, many of these companies quickly came to the conclusion that creating their own nurse triage hotline was far more complex than they had thought or desired to pursue. We – in turn – saw a great opportunity for a new kind of relationship with our alliance partners, in which we could offer them another significant value-add to their clients.
Since then, we have been fortunate to co-brand and white label Company Nurse’s offerings more and more with our partners, while keeping the telephonic nurse triage and all of the services that come with it “under the same roof.” This service is bundled to their clients as one key piece of their suite of workers’ compensation offerings. As the experts in the field, our added value for carriers, TPAs, brokers and managed care providers is better overall results for their clients, including:
- Easier and faster claim reporting
- Less usage of emergency rooms
- Lower number of claims
- Reduced costs
- …better outcomes for both employee and employer.
Improving the work injury experience for injured workers and reducing costs for employers has made telephonic nurse triage increasingly popular – if not an absolute necessity – among employers over the years. What’s more, by way of offering to co-brand or white label our expert services, we can directly support alliance partners not only in their sales process, but also in their management of the client account over time.
We are excited about this rapidly growing segment of our business, as we get to know our alliance partners – present and future – better, and offer one more way of providing the service in which we were the first, and are the best.