Second Triage
Every health-line call triaged twice; every mismatch reaches a doctor, every over-referral a price.
The job
Makes the health line safer and cheaper. It gets a doctor to calls that ended more mildly than the caller's words warranted, prices callers sent to emergency with routine symptoms, fixes the protocol behind each pattern and proves neither error grew.
The moment
Every call to the national health line is checked twice. Last month, 212 calls where the caller described something serious ended with routine paperwork.
The medical director opens one: a caller renewing a parent's insulin prescription said the parent had been "confused and sweating since lunch".
Calls like this now reach the duty doctor within 15 minutes of hang-up. That one ended with an ambulance.
Meanwhile, 1,400 callers a week with routine symptoms are sent to the emergency department, costing $1.1 million a month, and 60% come from one adult-fever line in the protocol. The medical director drafts a change to that line for approval.
Four weeks later, referrals from that line are down 22%, missed serious cases have not grown, and $240,000 was saved this month.
What it does
- Request a doctor callback
- Schedule a next-morning welfare-check call
- Override an urgency label
- Draft and approve a protocol or script change
- Pre-register the two-sided verdict
- Open a transcript
What you see
A Two Doors view of the triage-mismatch matrix (caller's words × how the call ended) with walkers turned around, a live doctor queue and a masked wall screen.
What it moves
Serious cases missed at first triage that reach a doctor within 15 minutes of hang-up, avoidable emergency referrals per week and the dollars saved, while making sure missed serious cases do not rise.
Built for
- Contact-centre operations
- Frontline staff
- QA, training & knowledge
- Finance
