Optimizing nurse triage call centers with virtual triage: Benefits for organizations, nurses, and patients

In this article, we outline the benefits of integrating AI-powered virtual triage into nurse contact centers. We look at the efficiency and financial impact at an organizational level, the support and reduction in workload for nurses, and improved care continuity and convenience for patients. We also compare virtual triage solutions designed for nurses with traditional rules-based triage protocols (RBTP) to show how this innovative technology can serve healthcare systems in a more dynamic way.

What is a nurse triage call center?

The primary function of a nurse triage call center is to offer preliminary medical assistance by telephone to an organization’s patients or insured members. Registered nurses trained in telephone triage assess the patient’s symptoms, determine the urgency of their condition, and provide appropriate next steps (ranging from information on how to self-care at home to referring them to an appropriate healthcare service).

The service is widely used as a means of offering 24/7 healthcare guidance to help patients understand their symptoms and help them navigate complex healthcare systems.

Challenges of traditional nurse triage call centers

While nurse triage call centers provide many benefits in their current form, there are still limitations and challenges to overcome from patient, nurse, and organizational standpoints.

• Nurses have a significant administrative burden: From filing initial symptoms and medical history to advising triage and appropriate next steps, nurses spend vast amounts of time filling in patient records. These large administrative tasks take up the lion's share of the nurses' time spent triaging each patient.

• High call volumes leading to overwhelmed staff: The sheer number of calls coming in each hour is overwhelming. Telehealth nurses need to be prepared and focused to deal with potentially complex medical conditions over the phone, which can become very stressful when having to take large volumes of calls every day. Additionally, due to the limited availability of registered nurses, there is added pressure to triage each person accurately and in a timely manner.

• Human error and variability in decision-making: Inevitably, human error can occur. In the current form, human error is compounded by the number of calls nurses are expected to take during each shift and the administrative burden mentioned above.

• Nurse burnout and difficulty retaining staff: Due to the aforementioned challenges, it’s not surprising that nurse advice lines experience a high level of staff turnover. With triage nurses under a lot of pressure, burnout is commonplace, and thus retaining staff in a healthy and work-ready manner is a huge challenge.

• Organizational costs in training new nurses: Frequent turnover of nurses means added cost to the organization, which needs to find, replace, and train professionals to take their place—with the potential for similar outcomes when the working conditions are not changed.

• Financial losses due to inefficiency: Lengthy interview times related to rigid, uncustomizable scripts cause inefficiencies in the nurse triage process. This unnecessary use of nurse work hours drives up financial costs.

These are just a few of the challenges facing nurse triage call centers daily, and ones that AI automation can help to greatly reduce.

Real-world impact of virtual triage for nurse triage call centers

Healthdirect Australia diverts 50% of emergency calls

Healthdirect is a government-funded virtual health service in Australia that provides free access to health advice and information via a website, app, and telephone nurse advice helpline to help people manage their health and connect them to the right care at the right time.

The healthdirect Helpline is a 24/7 telephone health advice line staffed by registered nurses who offer advice on health concerns, when to seek medical attention, and where to go for local health services. Healthdirect Australia introduced Infermedica’s virtual triage into its nurse advice line in 2023 with the following early results.

• Diverting calls from the emergency room: Since the implementation of Infermedica’s virtual triage into the healthdirect Helpline, half of emergency calls are diverted to less acute services.

• Highlighting additional services: In one year, 44,000 patients were connected to virtual emergency department services, which they otherwise may not have known were available.

• Advising on self-care: In the first year, almost 350,000 people were advised on safely managing their symptoms at home

Discover more about Infermedica & Healthdirect.

Médis alters care-seeking behavior in 83.9% of calls

Médis is the most recognized health insurer in Portugal and has been on the market for more than 20 years. It’s part of the insurance holding Grupo Ageas Portugal. Complementing its health insurance products, Médis also offers additional services tailored to clients’ needs, emphasizing innovation and the use of modern technologies. Infermedica's virtual triage solution for nurses is integrated into Médis’ Clinical Contact Center. This has allowed Médis to enhance their clients’ and nurses’ experience and streamline operational processes. The collaboration achieved the following results in the first year.

• Reducing urgent care visits: While 17% of members initially planned to go to urgent care, nurses guided by virtual triage recommended it in only 8% of cases—helping to steer members toward more appropriate care options.

• Increasing self-care: Only 17% of callers started with the idea of managing their symptoms on their own, but after calling the nurse contact center, 35% were advised to safely proceed with self-care.

• Covering a high range of symptoms: Infermedica’s virtual triage tool addressed 99.4% of the symptoms reported by members, ensuring that nearly all callers received relevant guidance.

• Guiding members to the right care: Contacting the nurse triage call center affected members’ care-seeking behaviour in 83.9% of cases.

Advantages of virtual triage integrated with nurse advice lines for healthcare organizations

From an organizational standpoint, the advantages of integrating a virtual triage solution into a nurse advice line come from having the best of both worlds. Essentially, it combines the personal and trusted approach of having a medical professional at the helm with the efficiency of utilizing digital solutions—plus combining medical knowledge from both sources.

8 reasons to upgrade from rules-based triage protocols (RBTP) 

Why should companies change from their current triaging protocols, such as Schmitt-Thompson, to use Infermedica’s virtual triage solution? The answer is that you can get the same quality with a much broader scope—that’s in addition to the wider advantages of virtual triage integration that are outlined in this article.

We’ve proved through peer-reviewed research that Infermedica’s virtual triage is as safe as Schmitt-Thompson's rules-based protocols. Plus, our virtual triage solution offers the following benefits:

1. Analyze multiple symptoms & collect more patient data: While traditional RBTPs typically initiate triage from only a single symptom, Infermedica’s virtual triage allows the patient to articulate multiple symptoms from the onset of the interview. Infermedica collects more than four times as much evidence in the initial stage; this gives the registered nurse and the triage tool a more well-rounded view of the patient's condition from the very beginning and offers the provider four times more patient data, which can be used to offer additional data-driven assistance.

2. Less rigid scripts: Traditional nurse triage relies on rigid scripts, leading to lengthy, linear question flows that don’t always match patient needs. Infermedica’s AI-powered virtual triage adapts in real time to symptoms, removing unnecessary questions and making interactions shorter, smoother for patients and nurses, and more efficient.

3. Decrease triage time: As Infermedica’s virtual triage encourages the input of multiple symptoms from the beginning of the interview, the overall triage time can be shortened. The average time of Infermedica’s medical interview is 4:41 minutes.

4. Customizable to suit your needs: Traditional triaging protocols are generic and hard to customize. Infermedica allows for customized pathways and condition prioritization tailored to your specific members or patient population—this is something RBTPs struggle with. 

5. Real-time updates: Traditional RBTPs require manual updates to stay relevant—our Medical Knowledge Base is continuously updated, ensuring guidance is always aligned with the latest clinical best practices. 

6. Real-time insights and dashboards: Infermedica virtual triage offers healthcare organizations valuable data to help call centers optimize workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and understand symptom trends.

7. Virtual triage with more touchpoints: RBTPs are typically limited to call centers and physicians’ offices. This may be enough for your nurse triage advice line, but what if you wanted to integrate it into different areas of your healthcare ecosystem? Infermedica’s virtual triage solution is compatible with webpages, chatbots, patient portals, mobile apps, and more. Allowing full integration for a more coordinated and consistent user experience.

8. Large number of protocols: While Schmitt-Thompson boasts approximately 420 active adult conditions and 30+ behavioral health protocols, Infermedica offers over 900 adult conditions and 60+ behavioral health conditions. Allowing for a wider assessment of physical and mental health problems. See a full list of comparisons ->

Advantages of virtual triage as a nurse co-pilot

For nurses, the responsibility of triaging patients over the phone, without the ability to physically see or examine them, can be quite challenging. This, in addition to the necessary administrative tasks required, has resulted in nurse call centers getting a name for themselves as stressful places to work.

From a company perspective, it’s important to address these challenges in order to make nurses feel more confident and comfortable in their role. By ensuring telehealth nurses have the necessary tools available to make their jobs easier, companies can help to reduce burnout, keep their medical workforce happy, and, in turn, retain medical staff for longer periods, thus reducing spending on recruitment and training.

Infermedica’s AI-powered virtual triage works alongside nurses to support them on each step of their call with the patient. Our advanced digital solution helps to remove the administrative tasks and cognitive pressures that lead to stress and burnout.

Reduce cognitive workload: Our AI-powered virtual triage reduces cognitive workload by prompting the on-call nurse at every stage of the triage interview, guiding the decision-making process with relevant clinical clues.

Reduce administrative burden: Many of the tasks associated with nurse triage are administrative. Virtual triage helps by automatically filling in the patient's electronic health record (EHR), sending relevant information to patients or follow-up consultants, consolidating notes from previous calls, and combining symptoms with risk factors, current medication, and medical history to give a complete overview of the patient’s health. Automating these important yet time-consuming tasks takes pressure off the attending nurse.

Potential to reduce human error: By guiding the nurse through each step of the triage process, highlighting potential risk factors, suggesting possible conditions, and offering patient education information, we are able to reduce the potential for human error through clinically validated automation.

More time to focus on providing care: By improving the efficiency of each call, reducing the number of administrative tasks that nurses need to complete, and providing digital insights to assist nurses in triaging correctly, virtual triage tools are able to make the entire process more efficient, thus giving nurses more time to focus on providing care rather than filling in forms.

Advantages for patients of integrating AI with nurse triage

For patients, the advantages of nurse advice lines are well documented. The ability to access healthcare information 24/7, the convenience of being able to call rather than travel to a healthcare facility, the assurance that speaking to a healthcare professional offers during times when they are concerned about their health, and so on. Here, we specifically outline the benefits to patients offered by integrating AI-powered virtual triage into nurse call centers.

Nurses stay in control: For many patients, the idea of AI solutions in healthcare is an exciting prospect, but one that they approach with caution. Integrating virtual triage into a nurse triage call center bridges this gap by maintaining the medical professional as the deciding power. With this solution, patients get the best of both worlds, with the efficiency of the AI-driven tool plus the already trusted element of the qualified medical professional. In addition, it helps to pave the way to trust in healthcare AI, which is necessary for more AI integration in other areas of the healthcare system.

Care continuity: By adding AI-powered automation to administrative tasks, virtual triage enhances care continuity across the healthcare ecosystem. This means that information provided to nurses during the triage call will be stored in their EHR and passed on to necessary personas for follow-up treatment. This ensures everyone involved in the patient’s care, and the patient themselves, are fully aware of the relevant medical information.

Faster call time: As we mentioned earlier, the average call time for Infermedica’s nurse triage interview is 4:41 minutes. For patients, this means getting the information they need quickly, reducing frustration, and accelerating care referral or self-care guidance.

Full-scope medical triage: The dynamic nature of the interview allows nurses and patients to converse naturally and cover all aspects of the medical condition that the patient is presenting with. Questions from the nurse (prompted by the virtual triage tool or otherwise) help the patient to describe associated symptoms or risk factors that they may not have considered relevant. These can all be added to the patients’ notes to ensure all aspects of the condition and medical history are covered.

Let’s talk about integrating virtual triage into nurse triage call centers

Following the information provided in this article, you can see that AI-powered assistance for nurse triage call centers offers numerous benefits to all involved in the healthcare system.

Whether you’re a healthcare organization with internal nurse triage advice lines or an external nurse triage call center, we’d be happy to discuss the possibilities that virtual triage can bring to your organization.

Get in touch with our team to request more information or schedule an intro call to speak with one of our experts in your region.