Tina Weikel leads the RN Triage team in the Access Center. Tina leads this team with compassion, structure, clear expectations, and always makes operational decisions with a patient-centered focus. This team provides clinical guidance and support to community members and patients in all regions for LVHN. They provide clinical support to our LVPG practices and continue to deliver service excellence through quality and safety initiatives.

In the past year, Tina has developed this team into a 24/7 MYLVHN Nurse line that provides clinical guidance to community members and patients. This became especially important in response to the COVID-19 pandemic when LVHN needed to support its community. This team also provides after-hours coverage for a number of primary care locations rather than an outsourced answering service. Through the clinical expertise of this team, they have been able to provide clinical guidance within the scope of their license, and thus reduced the need to page the on-call provider by 87% (a huge satisfier to both patients and providers).

Numerous other initiatives are also incorporated within this team, and Tina’s strategic leadership continues to create a dedicated team of nurses who are wholly dedicated to supporting our community and patients. Clinical triage via the phone requires this team to rely on their clinical expertise and detective skills because they are unable to assess the patient face-to-face.

Tina takes opportunities to reward and recognize her teams. Throughout COVID, the team moved to 100% working remotely, and Tina created ways to connect personally with her team. For example, recognition and acknowledgment during Patient Access Week, Nurses Week, and in November “Pumpkin- Palooza.” Tina is consistently available, made sure to operationalize Tiger Connect for the teams to communicate with each other, and ensures that she and other leaders are available for escalation 24/7. Under Tina’s direction, this team has been the recipient of 17 total awards for service excellence.