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What Medical Call Center Statistics Tell Us…and Inspire Us to Ask

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Weigh why some hospitals run a contact center and others do not before you choose a path

Most hospitals use a medical call center, yet a large share still do not. Learn what the usage statistics reveal about healthcare call centers, also called hospital call centers and healthcare contact centers. Understand why the topic drew so much reader interest and what to expect from the white paper on defining success and selecting a partner. Judge a call center by whether patients complete their next step, not by call volume.
A few months ago, we wrote a blog, “How to Choose the Best Medical Call Center,” which attracted much attention—and which inspired us to discover and examine the reasons for its popularity. This process ultimately led to the development of a new white paper, Outsourced Medical Call Centers: Defining Success and Selecting the Best Partner, that we will soon be publishing. In the meantime, I thought I’d preface our white paper’s launch by exploring our audience’s interest in this topic and to share a little of what to expect in the white paper. It’s hard to argue with facts, and why we first looked at medical call center statistics to get some perspective. What we quickly noticed is there is a huge divide between those that do or don’t actively use a medical call center. Interchangeably known as healthcare call centers, hospital call centers and healthcare contact centers, medical call centers have become a commonplace component for patient communications and coordination. An estimated two-thirds of all hospitals (approximately 3800 hospitals, a figure that is growing) use a healthcare contact center (according to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology study, Call Centers in Health Care: Effect on Patient Satisfaction). However, that remaining one-third accounts for more than 1900 hospitals that don’t have a medical call center, a sizable figure. That intrigued us: Why are hospitals so polarized when it comes to healthcare call centers, and how might this relate to interest in how to choose an outsourced medical device call center company? Forgive us for answering our own questions with more questions, but we found that using a Socratic method was the best way to find some conclusions. These questions included: For the hospitals that do use medical call centers:

• Why do they use call centers?

• Are their call centers part-time or full-time?

• Are their call centers in-house and/or outsourced?

• What functions and services do they provide?

• How well do they perform—and for what criteria?

For the hospitals that don’t use medical call centers:

• Why don’t they use call centers?

• What are their missed opportunities—whether for themselves and/or their patients?

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Our discussions yielded another provocative question that applied to all hospitals, regardless if they did or did not use a medical call center: What are the differences between an outsourced call center versus an in-house call center independently built, staffed, managed and operated? We determined that the best way to answer these questions (and others) would best be captured in a well structured, researched and illustrated white paper that:

• Defines medical call center structures, functions and capabilities

• Delineates medical call center advantages and benefits

• Validates the economic rewards of using a medical call center

Contemplating these questions creates paths to better understanding how a medical call center could be a potential solution for a multitude of challenges—whether for current hospital call centers that are not performing as well as they should or for those curious about how a healthcare contact center could improve their patient engagement strategy. Please be sure to download the white paper or get notified when it is published!
Brian Malone is Guideway Care Contact Center Director. Guideway Care has been a leading healthcare call center provider for more than a decade, including offering a nurse triage service. If you have been thinking about how to choose the best medical call center for your hospital, clinic or other healthcare facility, we are here to help find solutions.

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