About
Healthcare Call Centers
The
medical field is a fast-growing industry for which there is much demand and
great potential. As a key element in the provision of quality medical
care, healthcare call centers fill an important role in helping to enhance care
and hold down costs. Healthcare call centers also aid in communication
between patients and their medical practitioners, as well as facilitate
effective communication between care providers. As there becomes
greater emphasis on the quality of healthcare, there will be a corresponding
need of medical providers to turn to healthcare call centers to more
effectively and efficiently serve the medical needs of patients and their families.
As rapid changes occur in communications technology,
healthcare call centers
are performing an increasingly broader array of services to callers and patients.
In addition to receiving and placing telephone calls, healthcare call centers are becoming
medical contact centers, also handling electronic communications, such as email and text chat.
One key service provided by many healthcare call
centers is telephone nurse triage. Telephone
triage is quickly becoming a common expectation.
Although nurses
have been giving advice over the phone as long as there have been phones,
advanced computer-aided systems
allow this service to be cost-effectively integrated into call centers. Telephone triage,
however, is more
than just answering health questions. On each call, a telephone
triage nurses must assess a patient's health concerns without the
benefit of an in-person examination and face-to-face interaction.
To do so, nurses must rely on their communication skills, medical knowledge and
training, and follow proven medical protocols.
A second key medical call center service is that of
the medical telephone answering service.
Medical answering services answer and process phone calls for doctors, clients,
and hospitals. They often do this outside of regular business hours, but
can also handle calls during the day, answering overflow calls at times of low
staffing or on a regular basis. Calls
are screened and processed according to the specific requirements of each
medical provider. Information, such
as office hours, new patient policy, after hours prescription protocol, office
location and directions, and other routine information can be given to callers.
Answering services can take and hold routine messages for the staff, while urgent patient needs can be
dispatched to on-call personnel. A growing trend is
integrating medical answering
services with telephone nurse triage call centers, providing a full service
contact center solution.
Many call centers also provide
physician referral services. They
can make doctor recommendations based on location, specialty, insurance participation,
Medicare and Medicaid acceptance, or any other distinguishing characteristic.
Information about those physicians best matching callers' criteria can
be given over the phone or sent to the callers. Also,
caller data can be obtained and passed on to the referred physicians.
Another call center service is
class and event registration;
common options include, tracking attendees, sending confirmations and
reminders, computing available seating, and generating various event and
management reports. Other common services that are often provided
by healthcare call centers are appointment
setting and reminder services and post-discharge calling.
An
increasingly important role of healthcare call centers is assisting doctors, clinics,
and hospitals with the
management of their patients with chronic diseases or ongoing medical
conditions,
ranging from asthma to diabetes to tobacco cessation to obesity.
Healthcare call
centers can greatly assist in the provision of effective disease management
services.
For more
information, see the list of major providers of
call center equipment and software, as well as a directory of the
premier healthcare call centers around the world.
