Call 4 Health is a telemedicinal-focused call center for various medical management services, including nurse triage, medical answering services, appointment scheduling and appointment reminders 24/7, 365 days a year.
In the wake of healthcare reform and the shift to value-based care, hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, and physician practices need to achieve key financial objectives more than ever before, including increase staff efficiency, reduce denials, reduce appointment no-shows and referral leakage and secure pre-service payment collection. But they are also focused on improving the patient experience - a key driver of numerous quality initiatives and one of the underlying foundations to value-based care models.
THE PROBLEM
- Not having enough staff to handle call volume: busy signals and overuse of voicemail systems might not be working as the healthcare practice grows. In terms of or hospitals, such patient-centric environments deal with human lives and potential life and death situations. Losing calls can often be too high a premium to pay. Waiting on hold forever is just like any other consumer service line. It's going to leave the caller disappointed rather than pleased by the outcome. A bad experience is also amplified thanks to disappointing comments expressed through social media.
- High abandonment rates are considered another key factor. There could be conditions on the customer's end of the line that dictates the customer terminating the call. However, it is safe to say that an abandoned call is defined by the intention to reach a live agent and initiate a process or complete a transaction.
- No operational workflows to manage call processing - Successful workflows can help improve communication within your staff and measure growth. Workflows can reduce project risk, effect organizational and process change. With successful workflows, managers don't need to spend time focusing on operations.
- Not having the effective technology to process phone calls - All call centers can't operate without modern technology. Call 4 Health equips their team with multiple software and equipment to ensure their call center representatives operating seamlessly and providing the best, compassionate, customer service.
This is why Call 4 Health is a viable solution for growing practices. Rather than adding staff or telephone lines to respond to incoming patient queries, Call 4 Health as a leader in medical answering services - can step in with our highly trained call center personnel," says Joseph Pores, CEO of Call 4 Health. "Using a call center as an assist during office hours and for after-hours calls can bring significant benefits such as patient satisfaction and staff productivity."
THE RIGHT HEALTHCARE CALL CENTER MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
With all these financial and clinical goals, how can healthcare providers even begin to drive up patient satisfaction scores? Many are turning to remote medical call centers to improve their patients' ability to connect - they are seeking ways to use a centralized medical call center as a way to improve and streamline registration, scheduling, and patient referrals from disparate clinics, practices and surgery centers.
But not all healthcare call centers are created equal. To achieve your patient access goals, it makes sense to seek a medical call center solution from Call 4 Health, whose representatives have healthcare experience, whose metrics offer wait times of less than 45 seconds, where there is 99% call routing accuracy and whose robust infrastructure offers high availability, scalability and security.
If patient dissatisfaction with how they're being treated over the phone is an on-going issue for your medical practice or hospital, or if driving revenue and patient loyalty are two areas causing reason for concern - then a health care call center could be the solution for the following reasons:
1. Quick Response Time
It is imperative to take whatever steps are necessary for today's competitive marketplace to ensure that a call center enhances a patient's expectations instead of causing nothing but frustration and a consequent hang up. Timeliness and being a solution-driven resource makes all the difference.
2. Reduce the Burden on Administrative Staff
By responding fast to patient and client requests - Call 4 Health can help reduce administrative burdens, while also making the patient experience more positive. Here's how: From consolidated after-hours telephone services to appointment-scheduling services for departments that require overflow assistance, plus decreasing and/or eliminating the call abandonment rate and more.
3. Help Improve the Patient Experience
In today's competitive marketplace, patients are well aware that they have options. Providers are replaceable. Therefore, patient requests that require immediate attention should be dealt with professionally and expediently. Call 4 Health can do just that, with a patient-driven, professionally trained staff at the ready to handle what comes in at any given moment. No call should ever be considered unimportant. Bad service is unacceptable to the patient and/or client at the other end of the receiver. Professionalism should always be the number one expectation regarding the patients' experience.
4. Generate a Favorable ROI
Bottom-line improvements that are not always only measured in dollars and cents are one of the leading reasons for hospitals along with private physicians and licensed therapists to partner with health call centers. These reasons include: Drive revenues and patient retention, streamline operations by doing more with less; improve scoring for HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) for reimbursements; and access insights and data from business campaigns that span marketing to patient acquisitions.
5. Outsourcing Benefits = Infrastructure Cost Savings
Overall, there are plenty of beneficial reasons for hospitals and other healthcare providers to outsource call centers away from in-house receptionists and administrative staff to leading facilities such as Call 4 Health. Such calling centers help alleviate the potential problems involved with scheduling and balance of workload, can provide quick answers with fewer callers being left on hold, plus offer the opportunity for higher patient satisfaction rates and positive metrics for value-based reimbursements.
Client Overview
INDUSTRY
FEDERALLY QUALIFIED HEALTH CENTERS
CLIENT
1 LARGE HEALTH CENTER 10 CENTERS &. SATELLITE LOCATIONS
SOLUTIONS
CENTRALIZED APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING (EXTENDED HOURS) APPOINTMENT CONFIRMATION REMINDER CALLS
BUSINESS IMPACT
Call 4 Health improved the patient experience and access to schedule appointments by establishing expanded hours. This also assisted in enhancing the capabilities for reminder calls to reduce patient no shows.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
We reduced budget by $360,000 annually, there was an 10% increase in appointments scheduled, and there were additional savings in IT. Real Estate & Management not included in $360,000.
OPERATIONAL IMPACT
Call 4 Health increased staff efficiency, provided consistent call processing, and removed the stress of managing a Call Center.
The Outcome
- Call 4 Health designs a phone tree to provide better call routing.
There was a 44% increase in appointment calls.
- Call 4 Health provided bilingual agents to manage the client's large call volume.
There was an increase of 10,000-15,000 calls per month.
- We established a real time connection with client's electronic medical records and patient management system.
lntergy, Credible and Dentrix.
- We offer detailed call metrics reports that displays Call 4 Health's performance levels in real time, call volume, average time to answer. length of call, abandonment rate, service level etc.
With these metrics reports, we offer real time ROI measurement.
- We developed monthly quality assurance and performance meetings with professional patient care representatives.
This significantly improved patient satisfaction answer times and reduced call abandonments.