New Mexico's Nurse Hotline Lauded as a Model For Other States
© NurseAdvice New MexicoBy Christine Vestal, Stateline
A registered nurse takes a call at New Mexico’s 24/7 NurseAdvice call center in Albuquerque. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants other states to adopt similar call centers to assist residents during pandemics and other emergencies. (NurseAdvice New Mexico)
If your infant has a high fever or you're experiencing an unusual pain in your abdomen and you live in New Mexico, you may want to call the NurseAdvice line before you do anything else.
New Mexico is the only state with a 24/7 registered nurse call center that is free to all residents, whether insured or not. In operation since 2006, it has kept tens of thousands of New Mexicans out of emergency rooms and saved the state more than $68 million in health care expenses.
It has provided a basic form of health care to thousands of uninsured people who have no other access to care. It also has relieved demand on doctors and hospitals in a sparsely populated state where all but a few counties have a severe shortage of health care providers.
On top of that, the statewide call center has generated real-time public health data that has served as an early warning system during epidemics and natural disasters. In April, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will recommend New Mexico's advice line as a national model that other states adopt during an emergency preparedness summit in Atlanta.
"We did a thorough search to find out whether anyone had an ongoing telephone triage system that could be used as a model," said Lisa Koonin, a senior adviser in the CDC’s influenza coordination unit. "New Mexico’s NurseAdvice line is the only one we found. It really is one-of-a-kind," she said.
Nurse advice hotlines have been around since the 1960s, when health maintenance organizations (HMOs) tried to cut costs by inviting members to call a toll-free number to report their symptoms and get a nurse's advice before racing to the emergency room or making an appointment with a doctor.
Similar call centers proliferated in the mid-1980s when computerized guidelines and so-called tele-triage software became widely available. Medicaid programs also began including nurse hotlines as part of their benefits. But the vast majority of these advice lines have been for members and patients only.
New Mexico's advice line is free and has been used by nearly everyone in the state old enough to make a phone call — 1.5 million residents are registered in NurseAdvice line's database, 75 percent of the state’s roughly 2 million residents.
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