If you are the owner of a health clinic or if you have a private practice, you may already have an answering service that handles some of your calls for you. These services can be great for making appointments and taking messages, but you can find answering companies that are able to offer even more. Some offer nurse telephone triage, which can give your patients even more reasons to love your service.

When the patient calls, he or she will be able to ask the nurse basic medical questions, and if there is an emergency the nurse will be able to direct the patient to the right emergency services and notify you of what happened. The nurse telephone triage services will offer far more than standard message taking.

Of course, you can't simply choose to hire any company that claims to have nurses on hand who can handle triage. You need to make sure that they have the skills it takes to do the job and keep your patients safe. It is also important that the nurses employed by the company have excellent communication skills and are able to calm a nervous patient.

While you might have your own staff on call during normal clinic hours, and you might not see the need for this service, consider all of those after hour calls that are left unanswered. The nurse telephone triage service will be able to take calls that come in after you and the rest of your staff have gone home for the weekend or the evening. When your patients are worried, they will call no matter the time of day. Isn't it better to give them someone on the phone that can help them instead of just take a message?