Effects of telemedicine triage on efficiency and cost-effectiveness in spinal care.

Background Context: Ambulatory spine referral triage must be optimized to improve both quality of care and access to specialists.

Purpose: To evaluate cost savings in an existing model of telemedicine/electronic-triage for ambulatory spine referrals.

Study Design/setting: Retrospective review.

Software-assisted spine registered nurse care coordination and patient triage--one organization's approach.

Back disorders encompass a spectrum of conditions, from those of acute onset and short duration to lifelong disorders. The use of a traditional spine center model of patient flow, in which the patient is scheduled the first available appointment without an initial assessment of spine-related symptoms at West Virginia University Spine Center, Morgantown, West Virginia, resulted in frustration and delays for the spine patient and referring physician dissatisfaction. Today, the use of a software-assisted spine patient triage and registered nurse care coordinator patient navigation system in this multidiscipline, multimodality comprehensive spine program provides quick and efficient patient triage to the appropriate level of spine care (surgeon vs.