Tip of the week: Develop physician-extender supervised call policies to help reduce ED call burden

Allied health professionals (AHPs) represent one of the fastest growing fields in medicine and can be a critical resource for reducing the ED call burden for physicians. AHPs can provide such functions as:

• Performing initial assessments
• Collaborating by phone with their covering physicians, often saving a physician a trip to the hospital
• Applying casts
• Conducting preoperative physicals
• Admitting patients

The opportunity here is for the hospital and medical staff to develop policies that spell out the scope of services that AHPs in specific specialties can carry out without having to require their supervising physician be physically present. Protocols can be developed that drive what the AHPs do, further reducing the need for phone calls to supervising physicians. Of course, these policies and protocols must be consistent with state licensing statutes for an AHP's particular discipline to ensure the practitioner is not providing care beyond the scope of his or her license.

This week’s tip is an excerpt from Emergency Department On-Call Strategies: From Team Management to Compensation Plans by Kimberly Mobley; Richard Sheff, MD; and Bradley Zlotnick, MD, FACEP.