Your staffing plans for your CIS should include a description of the core staff positions, whether you will have both paid employees and volunteers, and detailed descriptions of the job duties of each staff position. It should also describe your strategies for recruiting new staff members and outline the training that these new staff members will receive.
The number of staff you need depends on the kind of service you will be offering, hours of operation, communication channels you’ll be using, and the volume of inquiries you expect. It’s important to remember that text-based inquiries (email, online chat etc.) generally take longer to respond to than phone inquiries so you will need appropriate resources if you plan to deliver a text-based service. To start a CIS, you need at least the following core staff:
- Director/manager: to oversee the service.
- Supervisor: to manage, monitor, and train information specialists, and to provide resources and backup support for them.
- Information specialists: to give accurate information and to provide support for the patient-physician relationship (enough staff to provide coverage during peak call times and lunch hours).
- Information resource specialist: to gather reference materials for your staff to use to help them answer inquiries, or to help design training programs and policies to help staff access appropriate web based materials (this could be a part-time staff member or an information specialist who performs this duty when not answering calls).
Most offices assign other specific tasks to information specialists when they are not answering calls. These can include:
- Filling publication orders
- Attending training and continuing education programs
- Completing documentation, taking part in work groups
- Conducting quality assurance activities, supervising others
- Acting as the resource specialist
