Conduit Health Partners COO Dominique Wells has a new byline in Medical Economics. Her piece “How early nurse-led triage eases healthcare’s demand-capacity crunch” looks at a pressure every health system leader is managing right now: Patient demand keeps climbing while staffed beds and workforce growth can’t keep pace.
Drawing on a recent American Hospital Association (AHA) discussion with executive leaders, Dominique explains how earlier clinical guidance can stabilize this structural imbalance.
A structural imbalance, not a temporary spike
Demand is rising because of demographics and chronic disease, while bed supply and workforce growth aren’t rising with it. During an AHA-hosted discussion, more than half of polled participants said their call and access workflows are still decentralized or inconsistent across practices, a signal that demand is spilling into pathways never built to absorb it.
Why earlier clinical guidance is the stabilizing lever
Rather than pointing to one fix, Dominique frames the solution around timing. Whether delivered through centralized access teams, extended hours or standardized protocols, earlier nurse-led guidance lets organizations assess symptoms sooner, direct patients to the right level of care and cut avoidable in-person visits. What matters, she writes, isn’t the operating model. It’s “the timing and consistency of clinical decision-making.”
She points to The Urology Group in Ohio as an example: after introducing earlier nurse-led guidance, the practice shifted 75% of after-hours patient calls to a nurse-staffed line, easing pressure on on-call physicians and improving the after-hours experience for patients.
The ROI case: access, burnout and retention
Dominique breaks the impact into two clear buckets. First, scheduling access. With primary care wait times regularly exceeding a month and specialty waits running longer, nurses can triage urgency upfront so limited appointment slots go to the patients who need them most.
Second, workforce sustainability. After-hours call volume layered on top of late-night documentation is a structural driver of burnout. Earlier clinical guidance gives physicians back a measure of the work-life balance that constant call coverage erodes.
The bigger picture for health system leaders
Health systems that wait until patients reach the ED or a physician’s inbox to introduce clinical judgment are managing the problem too late in the process. Earlier, consistent guidance is becoming a core lever in how systems handle the demand-capacity gap, regardless of how each organization chooses to operationalize it.
Read the full article
Read Dominique’s full piece, “How early nurse-led triage eases healthcare’s demand-capacity crunch,” on Medical Economics.
