Capturing clinical triage encounters

Clinical triage encounters with patients should be captured in the Appointment Book. These may or may not involve real-time interaction with the patient or their representative. Examples of single clinical triage encounters are:

• a clinician reviews an online consultation, then telephones the patient to complete the triage and determines that a face-to-face appointment is required
• a clinician reviews an online consultation, prescribes suitable medication and sends a text message to advise the patient to collect this from their nominated pharmacy
• a receptionist places a patient on a call list for clinical triage and the clinician contacts the patient by video to carry this out

Any clinical triage encounter is an appointment/contact that requires a Bookable Slot Type, as outlined in 'Bookable and non-bookable appointments' (healthcare professional triage). 

Practices employ many different approaches to managing clinical triage within and without their main clinical system. As well as EMIS and tools such as the appointment book, workflow and lists, external systems and tools are likely to be involved. These include online consultation software, website forms, spreadsheets and hard copy. Therefore, prescriptive action is not requested.

Instead, practices are asked to review how clinical triage encounters are recorded in their Appointment Book and any other systems, and to consider and implement how clinical triage encounters can be most efficiently and effectively captured in the Appointment Book without introducing undue burden.

Suggested actions are:

1. Review your slot types for clinical triage encounters against working practice. Ensure you have slot types that:
   • each map to the national category of ‘Triage’
   • have a Status Type which reflects the mode of the encounter
   • have names which reflect the category and mode, as well as being meaningful to local users, such as ‘Clinical Triage/Video’, ‘OC Clinical Triage Review/Telephone’
   • make use of colour coding and icons to promote appropriate use of slot types
2. Untimed and list sessions can be used to create appointment book ‘work-off’ lists of patients awaiting clinical triage.
3. When booking patients in, use a Slot Type with the Status Type that is most likely to be appropriate for these encounters. For example, if most of your clinical triage encounters are over the telephone, use a Slot Type with a Status Type of Telephone.
4. If tools other than the Appointment Book are used to create a ‘work-off’ list of patients awaiting clinical triage, these encounters could be entered as appointments as they are completed by the clinician.
5. Ensure that any clinical triage completed by the duty doctor or other duty HCP is accurately recorded.