Occupational Exposure Hotline

URAC 2008 Award for Best Practices in Patient Safety

For Employers: Healthcare providers, first responders, law enforcement professionals and industrial workers face serious safety issues when exposed on the job to blood or body fluids, communicable diseases or unusual substances. Rapid, reliable and documented guidance by specially-trained medical personnel is essential to the safety of the exposed person and, frequently, others with whom he or she is in contact. Waiting or ad hoc advice is not an option.

The FONEMED Program: In each of the three exposure categories, Florida Hospital Systems Centra Care and FONEMED adapted core concepts of the US Centers for Disease Control assessment condensed into algorithmic form and programmed into software. A medical professional uses the algorithms to: evaluate the severity of exposure; counsel regarding possible transmission of pathogens to others; discuss the need for surveillance programs; and provide emotional support and directions for immediate care. The software generates a report that is sent to the Health Care Provider who will treat the exposed individual.

Program Goals: The primary goal of the Exposure Hotline is to assure that callers in each of the three exposure categories receive immediate guidance from qualified medical personnel using best-practice medical protocols to direct them to an appropriate response to their specific safety concern. Secondary goals include identification of broader health risks to the public, documentation of all incidents, and ongoing collaboration with public health authorities to improve outcomes. If widely deployed, the Exposure Hotline could also be a major tool in the surveillance and control of threats to public health from pandemics and bioterrorism.

Availability: FONEMED offers the Occupational Exposure Hotline software as either a hosted system supporting clients’ own medical teams at their sites from our servers or as an installed system at the client’s site. We also offer Exposure Hotline services and backup from our URAC-accredited North American Medical Call Center.

Presentation: Charlene Slaney RN and Allison Leonard BN RN presented “Occupational Exposure Hotline: An Extension of Telephone Triage” at the 2009 National Telehealth Conference.  For a copy of their PowerPoint presentation, please Contact Us and request the “Exposure PPT”  in the Message field.  We’ll email it to you post-haste.