Comparing the vendors you are shortlisting.

Two different markets are compared below, because TULQ sells into both. Outsourced nurse triage has perhaps five serious operators, most of them fifteen to thirty years old, plus a large field of medical answering services that are not clinical and should not be evaluated in the same category. Care management is a more crowded field of well-funded software platforms and full-service vendors.

We are new. That is a real disadvantage on any comparison that weights operating history, and we have said so on every page below rather than burying it. What follows is our attempt at comparisons that are actually useful, which means telling you when to pick somebody else.

Care management vendors

Before you compare anyone

Two distinctions do more work than any vendor comparison. First, whether you are buying nurse triage or an answering service, they occupy the same slot and do different work. Second, what your current arrangement actually costs, which most organizations have never totalled in one place.

Sort those out and the vendor comparison gets considerably easier.

The six questions

1. Who answers the first call, and what licensure do they hold?
2. What protocol standard do your nurses work from?
3. What share of calls resolve without reaching our clinician?
4. What does encounter documentation look like when it reaches us, in what format, and how quickly?
5. Who defines the escalation rules: us or you?
6. Is pricing per-call or flat, and what happens in a bad respiratory season?

Sources

• Vendor descriptions summarized from each company's own public website.

Competitor information is summarized from each company's own public website and was accurate as reviewed; services, pricing, and positioning change without notice. This page is written by TULQ and is not independent analysis. Verify anything that matters to your decision directly with the vendor.