Vendor Spotlight on Echo, a HealthStream Company



Reimagine Your Legacy Call Center to Transform Patient Experience

The healthcare contact center is frequently where a patient’s first experience with your organization occurs. That first experience is an unmatched opportunity to deliver on your brand promise. Research indicates that we have thirty seconds to make a positive, memorable connection with callers; that first thirty seconds shapes hospital preference and hospital selection.

Call center transactions are a commodity. Transformative experiences differentiate. How can healthcare call centers make the equivalent shift from coffee as a commodity on the grocery shelf to coffee as an experience at Starbucks? How can healthcare call center leaders enable an intentional shift from acceptable but perfunctory transactions to personalized, meaningful engagements?

Exit the call center.

Instead discover EchoAccess PX Hub™, a reimagined access touchpoint for the new era of healthcare. Reduce – and hopefully eliminate – re-admission penalties. Improve imbursement by raising HCAHPS scores. Create transformative patient experiences that have callers and patients sharing positive stories about their unforgettable experiences with your organization. In short, redeploy your legacy call center as a profound competitive advantage.

A patient experience hub is a timely solution that reimagines yesterday’s call center transactions to transform patient experiences at touchpoints along the continuum from inquiry to discharge and at every interaction in between. Unlike a legacy call center, an EchoAccess PX Hub provides the specific tools needed to deliver engaging, memorable patient experiences.

For example, Call Center+ includes legacy referral management functions plus texting, a consumer portal with responsive design, data exchange, and API (application program interface). The provider directory includes patient satisfaction scores and patient comments by physician. The class enrollment solution enables class and event registration over the phone or online with secure payment. Other functions include deploying clinical triage care with the Schmitt-Thompson Clinical Content and reducing re-admissions with calls and texts to both patients and caregivers as a tool to substantially increase the number of kept follow-up appointments.

Now you can enable the shift from transactions to transformations, from volume to value. The EchoAccess PX Hub allows you to:

  • Include HCAHPS score integration provided by HealthStream, a CMS-certified HCAHPS survey provider and Echo’s parent company (vital information for callers and patients when selecting a physician)
  • Provide the option of installed software or cloud deployment, as well as the ability to outsource services for evenings, weekends, and peak call times
  • Deliver these advantages and clinical triage using industry gold standard Schmitt-Thompson Clinical Content
  • Combine EchoAccess product expertise with patient experience consulting through the HealthStream Engagement Institute; for example harness talent across key disciplines including enterprise contact center consolidation for integrated access, contact center operations, emerging technologies, and customer service certification

The HealthStream Engagement Institute has coached over 350 organizations to create patient-centered cultures with measured increases in patient satisfaction, employee engagement, care quality, and profitability. In addition customer service certification ensures that your team has the skills and toolset required to consistently deliver extraordinary patient experiences, beginning with the first point of contact.

Finally, HealthStream is the only referral management solution software provider who is a CMS-certified provider of HCAHPS surveys. HealthStream’s nationwide experience provides unique insight into how to raise scores. Of course, raising HCAHPS scores improves reimbursement. Explore the benefits of the EchoAccess PX Hub. “Everything else…is just a call center.”

About Echo, a HealthStream Company

Echo, Inc., a HealthStream Company with offices in San Diego, California, and Brentwood, Tennessee, has been delivering healthcare software solutions since 1985. Echo, Inc., the combination of HealthLine Systems and Sy.Med Development, is a market leader in medical staff credentialing, payer credentialing and enrollment, provider analytics, and referral management solutions. More than two thousand healthcare organizations currently benefit from Echo’s suite of products.

EchoAccess is an enterprise-class platform that provides hospital referral management centers with functionality for physician referral, clinical triage, provider directories, class enrollment, and re-admission reduction. EchoAccess enables hospitals to launch an integrated PX Hub that unites call center technology with trust-building patient experiences beginning with the first point of contact.

EchoAccess has served healthcare organizations throughout North America for nearly three decades. For more information visit www.echo-solutions.com or call 800-377-8737. An Echo team member would be pleased to connect with you.

[From AnswerStat December 2015/January 2016]