Beneficiaries & Markets for Teletriage

The Commercial Sector Beneficiaries

Providers

Physicians

• Patients have access to the health information library 24 hours a day.

• The Health Information Center (HIC) can screen all callers, provide medical information / telephone triage where appropriate, schedule appointments, and make and receive referrals.

• The call center can be used as an after-hours answering service, so that the doctor is no longer bothered at home with non-emergency calls.

• The doctor receives a synopsis of the patient’s ailments before the arranged visit.

Hospitals and Clinics

• The HIC reduces the number of non-emergency visits to the Emergency Room and increases referrals to the appropriate facility.

• The health information library reduces the number of strictly informational calls tying up the phone lines.

• The HIC can get the caller’s medical and insurance information and transmit that to the hospital or clinic in advance, making patient processing much more efficient.

Cellular Phone Companies

• HIC access can be the difference between the consumer choosing Company A vs. Company B, and serve as an incentive for customers not to switch cellular services.

• It will increase cellular usage and demand - especially in rural areas.

Payers

Insurers

• Calls to the health information library and telephone triage services reduce costs by reducing the number of people visiting a doctor and/or an Emergency Room.

• The information provided is a valuable tool in preventive health care.

Employers

• Fewer doctor and ER visits mean significant savings, in terms of higher productivity, as well as in lower medical costs.

• 24 hour access to health care is viewed as an employee benefit.

Ambulance and Medical Service Providers

• Telephone triage services reduce the number of ambulances dispatched to non-emergency situations, and provide faster medical assistance to those in need of help.

Managed Care and TPA’s

• By routing all calls through a Medical Call Center, managed care groups can route the subscriber to the most cost-effective treatment solution.

• A Medical Call Center will also have information about each patient and his or her coverage, and can schedule doctor’s appointments based on the severity of the medical problem, thus increasing efficiency considerably.

The Public Sector Beneficiaries

National and Regional Community Access Programs

Broader Access

• Whereas now a person living far from a medical facility may have to travel several hours to get medical attention for herself or her child, a HIC provides instantaneous access to home-care advice and referrals to appropriate treatment centers, and does so 24 hours a day.

• A HIC relieves surges of demand at hospital centers, and routes patients to clinics able to treat them closer to home.

Lower Cost

• It is significantly easier and cheaper to equip a rural village with a phone linkup to a HIC than to build and staff a local clinic.

Companies

• Public Sector companies are able to enjoy all the cost saving and employee benefits of the private sector (see above).

Public Health Authorities

• Through Health Information Centers, public health authorities can have real-time access to health care statistics and early warning signs from across their countries, which will aid significantly in deploying national resources in the event of a disease outbreak, and will help in general health-policy planning.