Carenet Health September 13, 2021
Telehealth—and telehealth nurses—aren’t new. Nurses have been guiding and caring for patients via nurse advice lines and nurse-provided phone triage for years. But as telehealth utilization in all its current forms has grown exponentially (and now stabilized), it’s time to revisit the role of a registered nurse.
The COVID-19 crisis has proven that telehealth can improve access to care. But the volume of telehealth visits has also at times threatened to overwhelm healthcare organizations, from clinical practices to managed care health plans. Most on-demand telehealth services are “quarterbacked” by physicians. A patient clicks to connect, answers a few text-based questions, then joins the queue for an MD e-consult. As telehealth becomes even more popular, that model is neither the most...