The Enterprise Nature of the Call Center in Healthcare
By Robert Kobek
Given two very long and I believe distinguished careers in the contact center industry and the hospitality industry, I’m not surprised about how little patient feedback information is shared between stakeholders in a company.
Being new to the healthcare industry, I’m keenly aware of the requirement to survey for Medicare reimbursement. What about the rest of the journey?
Very few of us executives have the luxury of focus. We look at the entire landscape, ecosystem, culture, call it what you will. There are times when focus can be misunderstood. One specific example is the way an organization views its contact center.
It’s imperative to use horizontal/peripheral vision. This phenom is what will create an enterprise view of how your contact center remains a profit center. From appointment to billing, the contact center is the point of the spear in managing the relationships between you and your patients.
Later I will use three examples to show the impact of a contact center report on at least seven departments or silos in an organization.
And in the case of gathering patient experience for the contact center where there are at least two outcomes, enhancing the patient experience through process improvement.
There is also a big difference between research and online feedback management where measurement of every key performance indicator is reported to more business silos.
Invariably, there is someone in the company who will treat a contact center like they are an orphan. Here is some guidance: Do what you can to help them understand what goes on in that critical, tip-of-the-spear part of the business. Contact centers are profit centers. Treating it any differently is a mistake.
Measuring the patient experience (PX) at the point of the omnichannel contact center/phone call has significant benefits when measuring the appropriate KPIs.
Applying them to training, retention efforts, net promoter scores, customer effort scores, and a host of other important process improvement efforts, requires dedicated energy. With measurement, effort becomes a project, a project becomes executable.
The beginning of the complete process to measure to enhance the patient journey has begun. The complete journey with qualitative and quantitative data, both structured and unstructured data (reporting).
What is particularly interesting (if you are anywhere near the data geek I am) about measuring the voice of the patient is how it compares with the way your dialing machine tracks a distinct set of KPIs.
And, depending on your contact center stretch goals, there are comparisons between average speed to answer and a customer effort score (CES) question to the patient. Comparing those measurements with the disposition given by the agent and you have quantifiable evidence of a disconnect.
A positive experience on the initial patient call sets the tone for the rest of the journey. Like the golf tournament precedes a trade show. With the enhancement of the patient journey at the contact center, the enterprise journey walks in step with the patient.
An example will help. The following comes directly from an NPS report.
In this case, there are several stakeholders inside your organization that can benefit from a customer comment. At a minimum:
center management
training
scheduling
patient experience professionals
This verbatim comment is the result of a patient responding negatively to one question “would you recommend us?”
Another example, and perhaps more important—the CES question. “Did xxx made it easy for me to do business?”
On a 7-point scale, one being they made it hard, seven it was easy, wouldn’t it be good to know why the scores from one to five were so low? Who should care?
accounting
marketing
training
center management
Then yet a third, the email delivery report. This one drills down on your ability to communicate effectively with the patient, at all levels. A clean list is a happy list.
Who benefits:
the patient
center management
IT—data managers
digital marketing
patient EX management
Who owns the feedback? Every stakeholder in the enterprise owns the obligation to enhance the patient experience.
The lesson here: work with the patient throughout their journey by asking them about their experiences. Every stakeholder in your organization should play a part in deciding what the voice of the patient should be. Then use that information to enhance that experience.
There will be certain outcomes for sure. Your patient will remain loyal to you and in the event you are billing Medicare your star ratings will come in much faster and higher.
It will be an honor to work with you at your convenience.
Robert Kobek is the president of Mobius VP, LLC, and Patients-Count®.
Due to the many hours they work and the number of patients they see, it can be easy for physicians, nurses, and office managers to neglect their own wellness. That’s even before tacking on the increased volume in COVID-related calls that many health systems are experiencing, and the mental health concerns often seen during the winter months.
All these factors reinforce how necessary it is for workers to have a means of alleviating the physical and mental stresses they experience on any given day. With that in mind, here are some of our top recommendations for healthcare staff on how they can manage theirs.
Start With the Heart
The American Heart Association phrases it best: move more. This is especially relevant to triage nurses as their jobs put them in front of computer screens for extended periods of time answering patient phone calls and offering the best dispositions for care. While they might not be able to leave their workstations frequently, there are several desk exercises that are available to them for maintaining their energy levels and staying motivated. Here are two examples:
Neck Stretch: This simple stretch helps loosen the upper back and neck muscle called the trapezius, which can ease tension, reduce stiffness, and prevent headaches.
Sit up straight in your chair.
Try to touch your ear to your shoulder without lifting your shoulder.
Use your hand to push lightly until you feel the stretch in your neck.
Hold for ten to fifteen seconds.
Repeat on the other side.
Shoulder Roll: Although not a stretch, this technique relieves stress because people unconsciously hold tension in their shoulders.
Sit up straight in your chair.
Roll your shoulders forward ten times at a slow, consistent pace.
Switch and roll your shoulders backwards ten times.
Get Some Sun
Chances are, you already know plenty about the importance of sunlight. It ramps up your body’s production of Vitamin D, which protects you from inflammation, lowers your blood pressure, strengthens your muscles, and improves your brain function. And all you need is five to fifteen minutes of it a day to experience these positive effects. It only makes sense, then, that physicians, nurses, and office managers take time to soak up some rays—even if it’s before and after their shift —by taking brief walks outside. This also gives them the perfect opportunities to…
Practice Breathing Exercises
The healthcare field can make you tense. It’s especially challenging triaging patient symptoms over the phone when callers are emotional or have difficulty explaining their concerns.
While nurses receive training on the best ways to manage difficult calls, they also need to take time in between those calls to breathe and reduce tension. As mentioned above, this is easy to combine with walks outdoors, but it’s also possible to do from workstations. Either location requires the same basic steps:
Sit up straight in your chair if indoors or stand up straight if outside.
Inhale for five seconds at a pace that allows you to fully expand your chest on count five. Try to use your diaphragm.
Hold your breath for three full seconds.
Exhale for seven seconds at a pace that empties your lungs by count seven.
Repeat this process ten times, or as necessary.
It might not seem like much at first, but these exercises can have substantial effects on your heart rate and cognitive abilities.
Share the Workload
There’s a lot of turnover in the healthcare industry. Some of that can be alleviated by giving physicians, nurses, and office managers more flexibility in how they use their time. Outsourcing calls can go a long way toward freeing up in-house resources for handling immediate, in-person patient needs.
Ravi K. Raheja, MD is the CTO and Medical Director of the TriageLogic Group. Founded in 2007, TriageLogic is a URAC accredited, physician-led provider of high-quality telehealth services, remote patient monitoring, nurse triage, triage education, and software for telephone medicine. Their comprehensive solutions include integrated mobile access and two-way video capability. The TriageLogic group serves over 9,000 physicians and covers over 25 million lives nationwide.
The average cost of a data breach in the United States has hit an all-time high of 7.35 million dollars. Just this year, there have been more than one hundred hacker attacks on healthcare organizations, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Despite better awareness among healthcare organizations, data breach costs average 408 dollars per record. Cybercriminals use weaponized ransomware, misconfigured cloud storage buckets, and phishing emails to attack.
Hidden costs in data breaches are difficult and expensive to manage, resulting in customer turnover, reputation damage, and increased operational costs. Knowing where the costs lie, and how to reduce them, can help companies invest their resources more strategically and lower the huge financial risks at stake.
While looking for cost saving solutions is important for any business, it is critical to make sure your vendor partners also meet the same stringent criteria on data security. This extends to your outsourced, after-hours services as well. Not doing the proper due diligence, can lead to a significant risk in terms of data loss and security.
Here are a few critical questions you should consider when selecting your partners in healthcare:
Do you have a chief information officer (CIO) who oversees the security program?
Do you have a formal security compliance program in place with yearly audits?
Is the vendor URAC accredited so there is a third party auditing the triage call center policies and procedures to ensure they are followed?
Does the vendor sub-contract services? If they do, are the proper BAAs (business associate agreements) and contracts in place?
What is their data breach insurance policy limits?
Is the data center infrastructure set up to maximize data protection along with regular scanning of the software and servers?
Does the vendor have an intrusion detection system to alert potential threats?
Does the vendor have adequate IT resources to monitor all systems and to respond quickly to any potential threats?
Do the products meet HIPAA, HITECH, and other security requirements?
Do the security reports meet all auditing and HIPAA reporting needs?
Do you have a formal HIPAA training program for all staff members?
Does the data center where the data is stored have proper security certifications?
Is the patient data secured at all times and in all modules of the product? (This must include strong password protection or other user authentication, data encrypted at rest, and data encrypted in motion.)
Is the patient’s data secured when accessed via handheld devices, such as through secured through SSL web sites, iPhone apps, and so forth?
If the answer is no to any of the above questions, then it may be an indication that you should look deeper and compare vendors before selecting one that will protect your patient data properly. Don’t be afraid to dig deeper and ask vendors questions if you have any concerns. Remember, it is a lot harder to change vendors once you implement a program than to ask questions and make sure that you have the best system in place for your needs.
Ravi K. Raheja, MD is the COO and medical director of the TriageLogic Group. Founded in 2005, TriageLogic is a URAC accredited, physician-lea provider of high-quality telehealth services, nurse triage, triage education, and software for telephone medicine. Their comprehensive triage solution includes integrated mobile access and two-way video capability. The TriageLogic group serves over 7,000 physicians and covers over 18 million lives nationwide. For more information visit www.triagelogic.comand www.continuwell.com.
The consumer has spoken. Patient experience is now healthcare’s core differentiator. In a recent study of 2,000 participants across five countries in four continents, six out of ten consumers identified patient experience as extremely important to them as they defined it. [Jason A. Wolf, Ph.D. Patient Experience Journal, Volume 5, issue 1, 2018]
Extraordinary first experiences delivered through your organization’s contact center and across initial touchpoints can strengthen relationships and build trust. First patient experiences influence hospital preference [SHSMD, 2012], and impact subsequent patient volume and corresponding revenue.
A strategic opportunity is to navigate the shift from transactions to deliver amazing, differentiating first patient experiences. Four insights can enable that shift.
1. Discover Your First Experience Differentiator
Exactly what is it that makes your organization’s brand of first experiences truly distinctive from the perspective of those you serve? That is, what separates you from all others in your market?
Consider these related questions:
Do your team members or associates feel personally supported and cared for? Are they eager to support and care for those they serve?
What level of trust have you earned with providers? Are they strong advocates for your organization with their patients?
Are callers to your contact center enjoying remarkable first connections? Are they so delighted that they become personal champions for your hospital or health network?
What do patients say about their experiences at your organization when they’re talking with friends across social media?
What is different about the first experiences you deliver? What’s better? What’s not so great?
Are the first experiences you deliver consistent at all first touchpoints across your enterprise? Where are they best? Where do they need help?
Stakeholders move through an integration or an assimilation process as they experience healthcare organizations. For many, hospitals are scary places. People die in hospitals. Initial emotions can easily include fear and distrust.
Intention and focused effort are required to move many stakeholders beyond negative emotions and over the tipping point into positive responses such as safety, trust, and finally, to advocacy.
A foundation of trust with team members or associates, enables them, in turn, to express confidence in the organization when they interact with providers, callers, and patients. Each individual stakeholder is at a differing level of negative or positive response based on their own personal experiences.
Identify a baseline measurement of how each key stakeholder group perceives your organization. Understand which behaviors move that group from negative to positive responses. Listen deeply and in-person to the concerns of members of each stakeholder group to clarify how to differentiate your organization for them.
2. Audit First Experiences Across Initial Touchpoints
Once each stakeholder group’s requirements to earn trust are understood (vertical alignment), it is time to achieve consistent first patient experiences across initial touchpoints (horizontal alignment).
Perhaps your organization provides the initial touchpoints. Audit first patient experiences from the perspective of stakeholders who utilize each of these first touchpoints.
Partner with the team members or associates in each of these patient experience one (PX1) touchpoint areas to eliminate barriers to extraordinary first experiences. Outline desired themes for first conversations, not word-for-word scripts, which become mechanical, but conversation guides that are responsive to each individual and relevant to their needs.
Role-play initial conversations. Each team member should experience the role of the “patient.” Then they can share how the experience felt and suggest ways to enhance it. Include these role-plays as a permanent and recurring component of team member education.
3. Earn High Trust
Trust must be earned. It is evidenced by deep, focused listening, which seeks to serve each unique stakeholder. Every interaction is an opportunity for a memorable decisive moment.
Once established, elevate trust—even catapult it—by delivering unexpected “wows.” A wow is a surprising, proactive response to a stakeholder’s need.
Here are several examples of first experience wows suggested by Inspire Digital Solutions’ National Advisory Council:
Deep, active listening to providers, callers, and patients by team associates
First experience ambassadors who make personal visits to hospitalized frequent callers
Personalized greeting and wayfinding by first experience ambassadors
First experience ambassadors in the ER to align ER patients with in-network PCPs
First experience ambassadors in the contact center calling an elderly patient’s caregiver, who might be a friend, neighbor, or relative to arrange transportation to follow-up appointments
A dedicated triage phone line for team members and associates
4. Multiply Extreme Service to Accelerate Results
Addition is one associate earning trust with one stakeholder at a time. Multiplication is a team of equipped first experience leaders who train and empower their first experience ambassadors at each initial touchpoint across the enterprise.Contact Center: The first contact with your hospital or health network is usually with the contact center. That first connection may be on the phone or online.
Establish behavior standards for that initial contact. As discussed above, outline key themes to guide the ideal first interaction. Listen deeply to acknowledge and validate both needs and feelings and to understand what the individual desires most—regardless if that desire is verbalized. Ask clarifying questions. Listen deeply.
Reduce or eliminate transferred calls. Make the contact center a single-stop solution. Once the initial request is addressed—whether online or on the phone—ask, “What can I do now to elevate your experience?”
First Touch Points: Establish behavior standards for delivering unexpected value. Work with first experience ambassadors to develop a unique list of wows at each initial touchpoint.
For example, first experience ambassadors for concierge, info desk, or wayfinding might include volunteer parking lot greeters who welcome patients with a smile, provide free parking vouchers, and escort them to their destination.
First experience ambassadors in the emergency department might carry a tablet loaded with contact center software, greet patients with kindness, and offer those without a primary care physician an immediate referral to an in-network provider for follow-on care.
First experience ambassadors in the contact center can reach out to a discharged elderly patient’s caregiver—such as a friend, relative, or neighbor—to arrange transportation to follow-up primary provider visits. This unexpected value reduces stress for the patient, increases kept appointment rates, and reduces avoidable readmissions.
A dedicated triage line in the contact center with a specific phone number expressly for team members or associates can speak volumes about the organization’s priority for caring for its own caregivers.
Hospital and Enterprise Integration: Preparation for service recovery should enable team members to seek first to understand, identify problem causes, discuss possible solutions, and suggest problem resolution.
First patient experience follow-up and follow-through should identify delays or roadblocks to appointments for needed services. Document complaints and compliments to enable both process improvement and recognition for excellence.
As extraordinary first experiences ripple across the enterprise, performance appraisals of all first experience ambassadors should include a review of their fluency with extreme service standards and provide financial incentives to recognize stellar performers.
Conclusion for Patient Experience
What is the monetary value of consistently delivered first patient experiences that positively distinguish your organization? Consider delighted patients who share their enthusiasm with friends across social platforms, higher satisfaction scores, and fewer avoidable readmissions. Also look at increased revenue and expanded market share. Is it one million dollars a year, ten million dollars a year, or more?
What is that value multiplied across your network? What is that value multiplied over five or ten years?
More fundamentally, what is the non-monetary value of an extraordinary first patient experience? This question goes to your reason for being, to your ethos, and your mission.
If your mission is satisfied by maximizing the bottom line over the immediate fiscal period, let’s be candid. In the near term, accomplishing transactions may be adequate.
However, if your commitment is to set a standard of excellence in quality care, then more is required. If your DNA is to transform the health of those you serve, more is needed.
We must navigate from success to significance. We must shift from processing transactions to deliver consistent, compassionate first experiences that earn trust. This is a hallmark of quality. This is access to optimal health.
Richard D. Stier, MBA is president of Inspire Digital Solutions. He brings three decades of results, improving first experiences as a senior executive, consultant, speaker, and author. He is honored to have led engagements resulting in more than 100 million dollars for clients. Inspire Digital Solutions partners with healthcare leaders to navigate the shift from transactions to deliver amazing first patient experiences.
In the emerging value-based world, healthcare providers and payers increasingly align incentives to drive improved patient health outcomes, more patient-centric services, and reduced medical cost for individuals. BPO (business processing outsourcer) service providers can bring a neutral consultative perspective, with design thinking and innovation, to meet the provider’s complex challenges.
To solve individual provider’s specific needs, BPO organizations bring customized solutions using a service incubation approach. It incorporates the following:
A new breed of patient engagement and experience solutions, with a consolidated, targeted strategy
Data management and integration, sharing intelligence from different segments of the collective healthcare ecosystem, including payers, providers, pharmaceutical companies, and durable medical equipment (DME) providers
Process optimization through automation and analytics, with a population health management (PHM) focus
A New Breed of Patient Engagement and Experience
Often, consumers of healthcare services encounter confusing phone directories, difficult-to-navigate-websites, and representatives who may not have the training or resources to make a patient encounter meaningful and productive. One of the most critical areas where BPOs can contribute is by helping provider organizations improve the patient experience and drive better health outcomes.
With the added patient choice in today’s marketplace, patient engagement, and experience—an area traditionally of lesser importance to health systems—is now critically paramount to attracting and retaining patients, driving healthier outcomes, and achieving higher ratings.
Patient engagement and experience is often a critical missed opportunity for provider organizations of all sizes. Patient access centers are legitimate business departments and have an important role to play in the transition to value-based, patient-centric care. They have the potential to create new streams of revenue. They engender patient brand loyalty. Most importantly, access centers are a critical first impression that ultimately determines whether a patient chooses to purchase healthcare services.
In a patient-centric healthcare economy, BPOs offer the right balance of technology and talent for seamless, patient-experience delivery. BPOs play an effective front-line role to drive revenue and patient satisfaction, reduce no-shows, and eliminate the need for patients to fish around for answers to their questions. These partners can more effectively employ their analytics and automation expertise to make the patient experience as easy as possible through both personalization and self-service—striving for that perfect balance between automated bots and live, human-touch interaction.
Data Management and Integration
In the new healthcare landscape, PHM is a key area of focus for providers. According to a May 2017 Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey of hospital CEOs, population health analytics investment is the highest-rated analytics priority for healthcare organizations.
The amount of data attached to every patient has grown exponentially. This must be gathered, integrated, and interpreted according to compliance guidelines and processes that can vary widely between payers and providers. Additionally, the datasets held by payers and providers can be different. For example, payers possess data on claims, financial analytics, and risk models. Providers have administrative and clinical data that includes case histories and outcomes.
BPOs with both payer and provider expertise can best assist, by bridging the data gap between these two organizations. For example, BPOs not only have claims data from provider groups but also from payers. By leveraging this comprehensive information, providers have a better, more holistic view of patient health. Armed with this intelligence, providers can positively affect a patient’s health outcomes, through PHM processes that also bend the cost curve.
Further to this point, each data set is valuable, but in isolation it doesn’t provide a holistic and contextual perspective of the patient. Providers need to leverage health plan data to move from episodic care to delivering outcomes-based care across the care continuum. Payers need access to patient information to work with providers to establish appropriate care plans for their members. Again, this is where BPOs bridge the gap for providers, as well as payers.
Automation and Analytics with a PHM Focus
With better patient engagement and data integration to leverage PHM, there is an ideal scenario for best use of automation and analytics. BPO partners can bring the requisite advanced automation and analytics, as key drivers of business improvements or process changes. With more understanding and awareness of the data coming downstream, BPOs know how to analyze these data points and decouple nonessential activities with automation for a positive impact on health outcomes and to drive costs down.
They also can offer “automation and analytics as a service,” relieving organizations of the capital and time investment of developing these abilities in house. Today’s cognitive computing capabilities will affect more complex, judgement-based activities (like origination and underwriting) with compliance objectives, too. Agility, speed, and accuracy are all positive customer satisfaction results derived from these transformations. Most impactful may be the automation data and applied analytics that will dramatically improve outcomes, for more forward-thinking strategies.
Conclusion
Today, BPO partners take an active role in helping provider organizations manage change, internally and externally. This puts them in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities found by optimizing patient experience journeys. By selecting the right partner, hospitals and health systems can position themselves to gain a competitive advantage in the present, while setting themselves up for an even brighter future.
Anand Natampalli is a senior vice president, global business development, for HGS, a provider of end-to-end business process services for numerous Fortune 100 health insurance companies and large provider organizations.
With the holidays upon us, and the New Year fast approaching, now seems the perfect time to reflect on why we do what we do. I have been in the healthcare call center industry for over thirty years, nearly half my life. I did not start out expecting to work with call centers, or even in healthcare, for that matter. Back in 1986, I had never even heard of a healthcare call center—probably because, back then, they hardly existed.
The how of my entering the healthcare call center world, although interesting, is not nearly as important as why I have remained it in for most of my adult life. Anyone who works in a healthcare call center or for a healthcare call center software vendor will likely relate to what ultimately keeps me excited about my job, even years later. Although the money I have earned during my career has certainly played a motivating role, when asked why, my answer always takes a broader perspective.
Reflecting on the past thirty plus years, I remain motivated knowing my efforts have positively affected millions of peoples’ lives worldwide. This is also true of many of you. Let me explain by sharing my personal experience.
In 1986, I joined National Health Enhancement Systems (NHES), a fledgling start-up associated with the Arizona Heart Institute. During my thirteen years at NHES (later to be acquired by HBOC and then McKesson), I helped grow the company from six employees when I joined, to over 300 (with their own call center) before they sold. I then joined three former colleagues in supporting healthcare call centers through business strategy and call center process efficiency consulting services.
I returned to the software vendor side in 2003 when I joined LVM Systems. At that time, LVM was still a small, sixteen-employee organization. Over the past fifteen years, I have had the pleasure of assisting in LVM’s growth to over seventy employees and to a position of prominence among healthcare call center software vendors.
This brings us to today and the reason I remain excited about my job. It is the influence afforded me to positively affect the lives of millions of people around the world. Let me explain. I have had the pleasure of helping grow two healthcare call center software companies into positions of leadership in the industry.
During that time, the numerous families of the employees at these companies have had the resources to put food on their tables, a roof over their heads, and clothes on their backs, not to mention money for little league and club sports, braces, music lessons, private schools, college tuition, and many Happy Christmases with presents under the tree.
It does not stop with just these 370 plus employees and their families. That is just the beginning. Each healthcare call center nurse, resource representative, and manager working in a healthcare call center using the products developed by NHES, McKesson, and LVM have jobs due in part to the efforts of these companies. These individuals again benefit from the wages they earn allowing them to provide for their family’s needs.
If we expand this even further, the real impact of the work I do, the work we all do, is significantly more far-reaching. Our efforts affect the lives of millions of callers helped by the healthcare call center software we use. Knowing that I have played even the smallest part in helping call center representatives in marketing call centers that facilitate enrolling callers in appropriate programs or referring them to needed physicians or services feels good.
And when I think about how nurses, in triage call centers across the country, daily avert deadly heart attacks or assist new moms in caring for their inconsolably crying infants, I know what I do is important. This is what keeps me coming to work each day, knowing that my efforts to grow and maintain viable software providers and products enables you to successfully help people.
It is this greater world-view that keeps me gladly doing my job. So, if you ever wake up and question why you go to work each day, look at the big picture and remember just how significant what you do each day is to the lives of the people you touch. Even if it is just one.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Mark Dwyer is the chief operations officer of LVM Systems.
Call center experts help achieve results-driven outcomes for medical call centers
It’s no secret that the healthcare industry is being pushed. They must accomplish more, do it better, and do it for less. This means more work, increased pressure, and lower reimbursement rates. And the call center sits at the center of this. They are in the ideal position to cost-effectively address these pain points. While doing so they can improve the level of care and enhance patient access.
Often the telephone serves as a patient’s entry-point into a health system, preparing them to receive a lifetime of healthcare services. And Call Center Sales Pro is ready to help healthcare providers navigate this ever-evolving reality for their call center.
Visionary Leadership: Call Center Sales Pro was launched in 2014 by call center industry veteran, Janet Livingston. Her initial mission was to help outsource call centers and answering services take the pain out of growing their business. Since then Call Center Sales Pro has developed into a full-service contact center consultancy. They pride themselves in addressing big picture issues for their clients. This includes operations, accounting, technology, customer service, and administration, in addition to sales and marketing.
They also expanded into the healthcare niche. The collective expertise of their team is an ideal match for the needs and opportunities afforded by the healthcare industry. “We didn’t start out focusing on healthcare,” Livingston said, “but that’s certainly where were headed. Our team of call center professionals fits great with the healthcare industry. We know how to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of the call center to achieve profitable outcomes—and healthy results.”
HIPAA Compliance Training: Toward this end, Call Center Sales Pro has developed a HIPAA compliance training program. It’s designed to accomplish three things. The first is to educate healthcare call center employees about HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996). Next, the course covers why this is important. Last, they stress how to follow its guidelines. This includes learning about PHI (protected health information), how to recognize it, and the essential steps to take to protect it. Critical to this is understanding how PHI is transmitted between covered entities (CE) and business associates (BA).
Livingston notes that HIPAA training is required for anyone with access to PHI. Additionally, all healthcare organizations must provide HIPAA instruction for all staff, with periodic refresher training. Call Center Sales Pro’s HIPAA compliance training program addresses these needs. It’s an online video course with a live instructor and takes about 45 to 60 minutes.
Healthcare Call Center Consulting: While their HIPAA compliance training program is a critical tool for every healthcare call center, the cornerstone of Call Center Sales Pro’s work revolves around healthcare call center consulting. They offer a full-service consultancy that specializes in addressing the needs of healthcare contact centers in today’s ever-changing environment.
Their team of consultants can assist healthcare organizations with their call center operation, customer service, and agent training. They can also address staffing, disaster recovery planning, and call center technology.
By customizing their consulting program, they can meet the specific needs of each client, which can include:
Add expertise to supplement the call center’s management team.
Optimize systems, protocols, and processes for optimal results.
Pursue new initiatives.
Solve problems that restrict the ability to capitalize on evolving opportunities.
Refocus call center direction and priorities.
System Optimization: A third component Call Center Sales Pro addresses for healthcare call centers focuses on call center system optimization. This specifically addresses the 1Call platform from Amtelco. Call Center Sales Pro is an expert resource in mastering this powerful technology and harnessing it to achieve maximum results.
The key outcomes that healthcare call centers can accomplish with Call Center Sales Pro as their partner include helping patients better manage their healthcare, increasing per-patient revenue, and maximizing their lifetime value. Critical to this is helping shift call centers from being a cost center to a revenue center.
In addition, Call Center Sales Pro can handle strategic planning and logistics, offer technical support and system engineering, and provide agent training and coaching. They can also address system setup, configuration, and optimization, as well as enhance medical answering service functions.
Conclusion: Call Center Sales Pro is a one-stop solutions provider for healthcare call centers.
Janet Livingston is the president of Call Center Sales Pro, a premier sales and marketing service provider for the call center industry, that offers healthcare call center consulting, system optimization, and HIPAA compliance training. Contact Janet at contactus@ccsp.us or call 800-901-7706.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations are competing more fiercely to gain and retain patients’ business. And first impressions are critical. That’s why a modernized patient contact center is critical both for differentiating your organization from the competition and for preventing revenue leakage.
How is your organization leveraging this critical contact point? What success are you having getting patients through your front door and retaining them as loyal consumers?
Assessing Your Patients’ Needs: Just like you, your health system’s patients are consumers who shop at Amazon, purchase airline tickets, and stay at hotels. They’ve grown accustomed to a concierge-level of customer service, and this has altered their perceptions of what a high-quality healthcare experience should look like.
The retail world has decades of experience providing this level of service and has leveraged modern technology to make constant improvements to help differentiate their brand, as well as retain and grow their customer base. The healthcare industry is just starting to catch on—not just because it makes good business sense, but also because they are now being incentivized to implement value-based care throughout the patient experience and and penalized if they fall short.
Let’s explore how to measurably improve patient experiences and engagement in ways that are realistic and based on the unique requirements of healthcare delivery.
Phase 1: Establish the Foundation: From your patients’ perspective, even small hospitals can be difficult to navigate via telephone. Partial or full automation of inbound phone calls from patients allow providers to create a “single front door” for patients. This creates a unified patient experience and reduces needless call transfers. Adding automated patient identification and authentication not only personalizes the interaction and ascertains the primary reason for the patient’s call, but it also leads to complete resolution for a host of common inquiries such as appointment confirmations, directions, hours, and payments without ever needing to engage an agent.
With this streamlined foundation in place, providers can begin to continuously and consistently track patient interactions to build intelligence for future interactions as well as gather communication preferences where possible. Every new element of data collected builds on previous elements, fostering a holistic portrait of patients. This creates the foundation for predictive intent and provides a better patient experience. In addition, as you develop a performance baseline, you can leverage patient experience surveys to use actionable data to make targeted improvements.
Phase 2: Build on Your Success: One goal of value-based care is keeping patients in your health system but out of the hospital. Why not pursue a similar goal with patient engagement? By applying dynamic decision-making to the data collection efforts established in phase 1, you can begin to develop proactive patient engagement strategies to reduce the need for patients to call you.
For example, with the right automated inbound solution, you identify patients calling from a mobile device and then take that opportunity to drive them to alternative, lower cost channels, such as text communications and patient portals. These elements will further the productivity of your access center, drive cost from your business, and maximize the patient experience. This will also provide you with a steady stream of valuable patient data to continue to enhance and optimize your solution.
Phase 3: Patient Preferences: This segment includes all components of phases 1 and 2, layering in patient communication preferences and cross-channel patient interaction data. In this scenario, you could see that a patient accessed the patient portal to find a specialist and is now calling into the access center for help. An intelligent self-service solution recognizes the patient, confirms they are looking for a specialist, and sends the patient directly to the appropriate scheduling agent. This happens without the patient having to make a single menu selection. Again, this provides an effortless and loyalty-building patient experience.
Finally, with all three phases offered in a cloud-based, self-service environment, you will achieve maximum scalability, reliability, and flexibility for agents who work in either a brick-and-mortar setting or through a business process outsourcing partner. This ensures your access center will always be available to support patients and providers.
The goal of contact centers should be to make the patient experience as easy as possible through both personalization and self-service. The intent is to strive for that perfect balance between automation and live, human-touch interaction.
Your health system has invested considerable time, energy, and money to provide value across the continuum of care. Why squander it over a bad first impression? By taking practical steps toward patient-centric engagement, providers can create a high-quality, intuitive, and effortless consumer experience that has elements of a world-class retail service, while meeting the unique needs of the healthcare setting.
Donna Martin is senior vice president, Global Health Services, at Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS).
2016 Contact Center Expo & Conference Highlighting the Rise of Customer Experience
ICMI, an industry leader for more than 30 years, announced a new program for its 2016 Contact Center Expo & Conference. As the highest rated event for customer service professionals, this year’s event will help attendees discover best practices for their contact centers and new ways to stay ahead of rising customer expectations.
As customers increasingly seek service in channels such as self-service, chat, and social media, they’ve gained control over where, how, and with whom they’d like to do business. This shift places an increased emphasis on the contact center and requires leaders to align their people, processes, and technologies to provide truly personalized interactions. The Contact Center Expo & Conference will offer new insights and best practices to meet these needs through new keynotes, sessions, workshops, and training focused on seven core subject areas.
Beyond the program’s core session and training offerings, attendees can also participate in local contact center tours, networking functions, case study presentations, and the ICMI Global Contact Center Awards Party.
Do you know someone who is very comfortable doing a job that has no leadership dimension, even though you just know they could thrive as a leader? Many of these individuals have a condition sometimes referred to as altitude sickness. This is not the medical condition that occurs when you are at high altitudes and cannot get enough oxygen. This kind of altitude sickness refers to the fear of success, the fear of reaching great heights.
Jesika leads a department of engineers at a design and manufacturing company. Two years ago, she realized her organization was growing too large for its current structure. To keep a workable supervisor-to-employee ratio, she needed to split the biggest section into two. This left her with a supervisor position to fill. She preferred to fill the position from within the existing organization, thus providing career growth paths for her existing employees. She sat back in her chair and thought about which of her employees might be candidates for the new position.
The water-cooler favorite was Donald, who had been lobbying for a move into management for years. But Donald was not well liked by his coworkers. He was not good at collaborating with his team. On more than one occasion, he mentioned that, if he were supervisor, people would do what he said. When rumors of an organization change started circulating, the thought of Donald being in a supervisory role negatively affected morale.
No other employees had expressed interest in moving into supervision. Jesika remembered that, when she first became a supervisor, she did not want the job. She eventually took the job after her boss convinced her that reluctant leaders are often the best leaders. They lead from a desire to serve, not a desire for power.
The following are five ways to identify reluctant leaders:
1) Peers Seek Their Counsel: Most organizations have two kinds of leaders: people with leader in their title and people who are sought out for advice by their peers. When looking for reluctant leaders, observe your teams. Who do the team members respect? Who do they go to before bringing problems to the attention of management?
2) They Are Focused on Team Success, Not Individual Glory: Some employees are too busy focusing on their tasks to help others with theirs. Other employees realize that if one employee is stuck, it hurts the team, and they are willing to either help the others or direct them to someone who can. These are potential leaders. Some employees take as much individual credit for the work of the team as they can. Other employees are selfless and focus on the achievements of the group. These are potential leaders.
And when thing go wrong, as they sometimes do, some employees are quick to blame others. Other employees focus on fixing the problem and correcting the root cause. These are potential leaders.
3) They Are Passionate About the Work: Which employees have a passion for the work? They should take pride in a job well done and see their work as a reflection of their character. They sometimes stay late when in the middle of a key project – not to impress the boss but because they are caught up in the moment and lose track of time. That passion and dedication inspires others. If they constantly have their eye on the clock, they are not leaders.
4)They Exercise Good Judgment: One of the key characteristics of a great leader is judgment. A sign of good judgment is when employees seek help. When they are stuck, do they immediately get help? Do they spend a little time and effort on the problem but then reach out for assistance when they realize it will affect the schedule? Or do they not ask for help and then, when the task is overdue, blame the late delivery on the problem they couldn’t solve? The first and last examples are not yet ready for leadership.
5)They Are Lifelong Learners: Employees who are lifelong learners are potentially good leaders. They realize that they don’t know it all. They are more likely to listen and fairly evaluate the input of others – in particular, their subordinates. This promotes innovation and encourages employees to speak up if they feel something is heading in the wrong direction, leading to happier teams and better quality decisions. Employees who feel they do not have anything new to learn and don’t fairly assess contrary inputs are at risk for stagnation and ignoring the warning signs of trouble.
In thinking of all the people in her department, Matt stood out. Matt was quiet, very technically competent, and respected by his peers. On more than one occasion, Matt said he was happy doing design work and had no desire to become part of management. Jesika ran Matt through the criteria for reluctant leaders, and he met them all; she felt he was just suffering from a touch of altitude sickness.
Jesika met with Matt and had a heart-to-heart discussion. She gave him specific examples of how he had all the characteristics of a reluctant leader. She also shared that she also had suffered from altitude sickness and understood his reluctance. She asked him to take a day and consider accepting this challenge.
Matt slept on it, and the next day he agreed to become a supervisor. Jesika promised to mentor him and provide him with the training and resources he needed to be successful. Fast-forward to today: Matt is a well-respected leader and has not let the power go to his head.
Sometimes the best leaders are the reluctant leaders. When assessing your teams, look for quiet, unassuming employees who demonstrate the qualities of reluctant leaders and help cure them of their altitude sickness.
Walt Grassl is a speaker, the author of Stand Up and Speak Up, and the host of the Internet radio show of the same name. Walt’s accomplishments include success in Toastmasters International speech contests and performing standup comedy at the Hollywood Improv and the Flamingo in Las Vegas. For more information on bringing Walt Grassl to your next event, visit waltgrassl.com.
