5 Benefits of the User Experience with Anytime After Hours
When a child is sick, it’s easy for parents and caregivers to feel helpless. They are hesitant to bother you during evenings and on weekends because they know doctors need rest. Therefore, caregivers frequently rely on “Dr. Google” to guide their decision-making. Of course, the internet provides a lot of useful information, but it’s non-specific to each child and has the tendency to incite panic and increase anxiety. As a result, your patients often end up in the emergency room for symptoms that could be managed at home.
If you’re looking for a solution that combines the knowledge of medical providers with the expertise of an emergency room, consider Anytime After Hours! It’s an after-hours medical service that facilitates interactive discussions between a nurse and a patient and their family. With this platform, we are committed to empowering caregivers and reducing unnecessary emergency room visits.
How do we accomplish this? Our triage nurses are experienced medical professionals who offer consistent and appropriate medical advice with every call. Anytime After Hours provides patients and their parents with high-quality care, utilizing evidence-based recommendations and protocols while keeping patients in the medical home. In this blog, we’ll explore five benefits of the user-friendly experience of Anytime After Hours when patients connect with our pediatric nurse triage.
1. Experienced Nurses Answer the Call — Every Time
Anytime After Hours is staffed by on-call registered nurses with at least five years of emergency room experience. Our nurses do not talk at your patients; they talk with them. In fact, they prioritize asking questions, seeking to understand, and offering guidance. One of the goals of Anytime After Hours is to facilitate the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. At the minimum, happy parents equal patient retention. When your patients’ families feel well cared for and heard, they are more likely to return to your pediatric practice and even tell their mom friends about your office. More importantly, parents remain calm and feel reassured that you and your staff truly want to help them heal.
2. Triage Nurses Can Consult with a Provider
Our highly trained and qualified nurses can differentiate between callers who simply need reassurance and those who are experiencing true emergency symptoms. However, we recognize that there are occasionally times when a call requires collaboration with the medical doctor. As such, Anytime After Hours nurses have the ability to consult with the on-call physician if and when it’s necessary.
3. Consistent Protocols Guide Triage Calls
When speaking with an Anytime After Hours triage nurse, your patients always receive evidence-based medical advice because our nurses are well-versed in the universally approved Schmitt-Thompson Protocols. The consistent use of these protocols means your patients and their parents receive medically appropriate guidance for a multitude of concerns. Some of the most common calls made to an after-hours exchange are about rashes, thrush, and conjunctivitis.
4. Anytime After Hours Nurses Can Offer Advice on OTC Medications and Home Remedies
Most of the time, parents of sick children who make after-hours calls are seeking reassurance. In fact, data shows that more than 80 percent of after-hours nurse calls are made based on parent worry and do not need hands-on care. Thanks to the use of Schmitt-Thompson Protocols, Anytime After Hours triage nurses are able to offer guidance on over-the-counter medications that will treat your patient’s condition. They can also suggest home remedies, if appropriate. These suggestions provide much-needed reassurance to worried parents.
5. Triage Nurses Provide Health Education
One of the values of Anytime Pediatrics is to ensure that patients and their parents feel empowered in their treatment plan. Therefore, our nurses offer education related to self-care or disease process management. In addition, upon completion of the phone call, nurses are able to send PDF instructions and handouts of the same information provided in the phone call. This health education comes from the Triage software and includes resources — like the handouts you get in the doctor’s office — so that caregivers have something to refer to later. Handouts can be sent via text or email to parents.
Implement Anytime After Hours to Enhance Patient Care!
Don’t you want a solution that improves the patient-provider relationship while simultaneously reducing long wait times and high costs of unnecessary emergency room visits? With Anytime After Hours, you get those benefits. Plus, patients are able to remain in their medical home, which always leads to better health outcomes.
For more information about integrating Anytime After Hours into your pediatric practice, contact us today to request a consultation.
