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Activation Pathway: Patient Access

Problem context: patients cannot get in — calls, scheduling, after-hours and verification friction stop the first step. Umbrella for Medical Contact Center, Appointment Scheduling, After-Hours Support and Insurance Verification. Also searched as: patient access, access to care, front door.

How To Schedule Patients Effectively: Medical Appointment Scheduling Guidelines

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Medical Appointment Scheduling guidelines were created to help medical providers, including primary care physicians and specialist physicians, schedule medical appointments in a way that achieves high-quality outcomes, while being efficient and effective. These guidelines are meant to supplement other physician scheduling policies and procedures in place at the practice.

Medical Appointment Scheduling Tips

Allow patients to self-schedule online.

Giving patients the ability to schedule their own appointments has many advantages. First, it involves them in their own care, albeit in a small way. Second, it helps you keep your scheduling process streamlined. Third, it saves your staff time and saves you billable hours. It also improves patient satisfaction, as they feel like they were able to visit your office on their terms. If you’re still not convinced, we wrote a whole article on this. Read: Key Reasons Healthcare Practices Should Offer Online Scheduling

Create a patient waiting list.

Last minute cancellations happen, often for legitimate reasons. However, this doesn’t make them any less disruptive. One way to lessen the impact of these disruptions is to implement a patient waiting list. Ask patients during scheduling if they wish to be on a waiting list to get an earlier appointment. Then, in the case of a last minute no show, send mass text messages to patients on the waiting list.

Use an automated patient recall system.

Patient recall systems help you in two ways. First, it helps make sure that patients schedule regular appointments with you, which helps keep your schedule full. Second, it can help bring back patients who haven’t had regular appointments in a while. These patients often miss their appointments because life gets in the way. But, with an effective patient recall system, you can keep patients on top of their appointments and keep your schedule booked. Read more: Using Automated Phone Calls and Texts to Improve Patient Outcomes

Prioritize appointments.

Different patients have different needs. Some patients require more time and higher levels of care. Other patients may not need to be brought in at all. This is where prioritizing appointments can be very effective. To do this most efficiently, have a staff member evaluate each call coming in to determine whether the patient needs to be seen for an in-person appointment, or whether a phone consultation would suffice. This way, you will be able to keep your schedule full while also serving your patients in the best possible way.

Collect and use data to find opportunities to improve.

As a burgeoning medical practice, there’s a lot that’s happening that you might not be tracking. Some of this data may reveal issues in your scheduling and patient intake flow. Some of this may deal with how well you’re converting patients. If your patient pipeline has leaks, or if your staff is spending too much time on tasks that could be automated, then addressing these issues will be important for improving appointment scheduling. Guideway Care provides software that allows you to track trends in patient conversion and activation. If you’re looking for a patient tracking system to meet your needs, check out Guideway Care solutions here: Patient Tracking System

A Guide to How to Verify Insurance Eligibility & Benefits

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If you are like most people, you probably don’t enjoy dealing with insurance companies. In fact, you may go out of your way to avoid them! This is especially true when it comes to verifying insurance eligibility and benefits. It can be a confusing process, and often times it feels like you are getting the runaround from customer service representatives. In this blog post, we will outline the process of how to verify insurance benefits and eligibility so that you can do it yourself without having to deal with the hassle! Learn What Is the Role of a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist?

1. Gather the Necessary Information

The first step in verifying your insurance eligibility and benefits is to gather all of the necessary information. This includes your insurance card, a list of your medications, and any other relevant medical documents. Once you have everything gathered, you will need to contact your insurance company.

2. Call Customer Service

Most insurance companies have a customer service number that you can call to speak with a representative. When you call, be sure to have your information handy so that you can easily reference it. The customer service representative will likely ask you for your policy number, date of birth, and social security number. They may also ask for some additional information such as your address or phone number.

3. Determine Eligibility and Benefits

Once the customer service representative has all of the necessary information, they will be able to tell you whether or not you are eligible for coverage. If you are eligible, they will also be able to provide you with a list of your benefits. This includes things like what your copayment will be, how much your deductible is, and what services are covered under your plan.

4. Ask Questions

If you have any questions about your insurance eligibility or benefits, the customer service representative should be able to help you. However, if they are not able to answer your question or if you need more information, you can always ask to speak with a supervisor.

5. Repeat the Process as Needed

Keep in mind that insurance companies change their policies and procedures often, so it is important to verify your insurance eligibility and benefits on a regular basis. This way, you can be sure that you are always getting the coverage that you need.

Conclusion

We hope that this blog post has been helpful in explaining the process of verifying insurance eligibility and benefits. If you have any questions about medical insurance verification, just reach out to us.

Understanding Healthcare Call Center Best Practices

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Healthcare call centers are a vital part of the industry. They provide support to patients and healthcare professionals alike, and play a critical role in the overall functioning of the healthcare system. In order to ensure that your healthcare call center is providing the best possible service, it is important to understand the best practices that are currently in use. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the most important healthcare call center best practices.

Invest in Robust Agent Training

One of the most important hospital call center best practices is to make sure that your agents are properly trained. This means ensuring that they have a thorough understanding of the products and services that you offer, as well as the processes and procedures that are in place. Training should be an ongoing process, and it should be updated on a regular basis to ensure that your agents are always up-to-date on the latest information. Not sure if you have the resources for this? Read 6 Signs to Outsource your Medical Call Center.

Design a Comprehensive Quality Management System

Another important healthcare call center best practice is to use a quality management system. This system will help you to track and manage all of the calls that come into your center, as well as the outcomes of those calls. This information can be used to improve the overall quality of your service, and to make sure that your agents are providing the best possible service to your customers.

Utilize a Customer Relationship Management Platform

Another way to improve the quality of your healthcare call center is to use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This type of platform will allow you to track and manage all of your customer interactions, as well as the outcomes of those interactions. This information can be used to improve your overall customer service, and to make sure that your agents are providing the best possible service to your patients.

Implement a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Another important healthcare call center best practice is to implement a customer satisfaction survey. This survey can be used to collect feedback from your customers, and to identify areas where you can improve your service. By collecting this information, you can make changes to your call center that will improve the overall experience for your customers.

Make Sure You Are HIPAA Compliant

Lastly, it is important to make sure that your healthcare call center is HIPAA compliant. This compliance ensures that your call center is following the proper procedures for handling protected health information. By being compliant, you can rest assured that your call center is providing the highest level of service to your patients. By following these healthcare call center best practices, you can ensure that your call center is providing the best possible service to your customers. If you would like to learn more about healthcare call center best practices, or if you need help implementing these practices in your own health call center, please contact us today.
How To Schedule Patient Appointments Effectively?

How To Schedule Patient Appointments Effectively?

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Scheduling patient appointments is one of the important aspects of running a medical office. If you need an efficient system for scheduling appointments, you can easily find yourself overwhelmed with patients and behind on your schedule.

In hospitals, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey can provide valuable feedback and insights about the scheduling process. This survey is mandated for all hospitals by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and can be used to identify areas of improvement in scheduling.

Read more: Improving Patient Satisfaction: 5 Low-Cost Strategies.

One of the crucial aspects of patient satisfaction and a successful schedule is ensuring the right length of time is allocated for each patient. Here are seven tips on how to effectively schedule patient appointments:

1) Consolidate Appointments

When possible, schedule patients with the same condition or issue together. This will help ensure you have enough time to address their concerns and questions in a single appointment effectively.

For example, oncology care involves intense and lengthy patient visits, so it is beneficial to consolidate oncology patients into a single appointment if possible.

2) Schedule Appointments Ahead of Time

Encourage patients to plan and schedule their appointments far in advance. This will help you better manage your schedule and reduce the risk of double booking or overcrowding for specific times. If a patient needs to make an urgent appointment, try to find a way to accommodate them without disrupting your schedule too much.

3) Automate the Process

Take advantage of modern technology and automate your scheduling process whenever possible. Automating your scheduling can reduce manual mistakes, save time, and ensure that only relevant data is collected. From automated appointment reminders to online scheduling, there are many ways that automation can make your scheduling process more efficient and accurate.

For example, an online scheduling system can allow patients to book appointments at their convenience and ensure they are never double-booked. Automated appointment reminders can also reduce no-shows and keep your schedule running smoothly.

4) Use a Waitlist

Sometimes, you may need more time to accommodate your patient’s requests. To ensure not even one patient falls through the cracks, create a waitlist system that allows you to track patient requests and prioritize them in order of urgency. If your schedule suddenly opens up or you have an unexpected cancellation, you can go down the list and contact patients whose needs are most urgent.

4) Monitor Patient No-Shows

A patient no-show is when a scheduled patient does not show up for their appointment without giving prior notice. No-shows can cost healthcare practices time and money. To prevent no-shows, practices should implement a procedure to monitor and address them as well as remind patients of their upcoming appointments. This can be done through automated appointment reminders or patient follow-up calls.

5) Offer Self-scheduling Options

Offering self-scheduling options can make the patient appointment process more efficient and convenient. Self-scheduling allows patients to easily view open slots in their schedule and book an appointment without talking to someone on the phone.

Automated patient appointment scheduling can help streamline scheduling processes and reduce the time spent on phone calls, freeing up more time for patient care. Contact Guideway Care for value-based car guides on how to schedule patient appointments effectively.

Key Reasons Healthcare Practices Should Offer Online Scheduling

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The healthcare industry is currently in a state of flux. Technology has transformed the way we live and work, and medical practices are no exception to that trend. Patients want more convenience when they visit their doctors’ offices, and many physicians agree. One big change that has happened over the past few years is the advent of online scheduling for medical appointments; it offers several advantages for both patients and providers alike.

The Benefits of Online Appointment Scheduling for Doctors

There are several benefits to offering online scheduling for doctor’s appointments. Some of the chief advantages include increased patient convenience, better access to providers, and improved staff efficiency. However, there are many other less obvious but still very important reasons why practices should offer this service too. Here is a list of ten benefits of a doctor appointment booking system that will hopefully convince you:
  1. Increased patient satisfaction because there’s less time spent on hold with an automated service or waiting on hold with a receptionist for an appointment date.
  2. Reduced costs because fewer people show up at clinics unnecessarily (because they confused it with a different date).
  3. Improved efficiency by allowing nurses to spend more time with patients by handling fewer administrative tasks.
  4. The service easily allows for EMR integration with the right patient portal software.
  5. When scheduling online, patients are more likely to utilize other healthcare engagement solutions.
  6. Online medical schedulers reduce no-shows because patients are able to see when they have appointments scheduled.
  7. Patients gain access to more medical providers in different categories of insurance because online appointment scheduling software can schedule at virtually any clinic, urgent care center, or doctor’s office.
  8. Patients are able to schedule appointments in advance, which is especially helpful when they have chronic conditions.
  9. Online scheduling services enable patients who lack transportation or live far away from healthcare providers to get the care that they need.
  10. When patients aren’t able to visit a practice during hours of operation, online medical appointment schedulers give them another way to get in touch with their healthcare providers.
Not sure how to get started with allowing patients to book medical appointments online? Guideway Care is here to help. Speak with us today about our various online solutions. Want more info now? Read our guide to successful EMR integration.

What Is the Role of a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist?

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As a doctor, you’re always looking for ways to reduce costs and have more time in your day. You work hard, long hours with few breaks. As a result, you need a qualified support team helping with all the tasks you can’t get to on your own—including medical insurance verification. While you can give this task to your receptionist in charge of billing, this could mean paying for more hours or even hiring someone new just for insurance verification. A better solution, in most cases, is to contract with an insurance verification services company. For a fraction of the cost, you’ll have access to top-notch insurance verification specialists, as well as other services that can make your practice run more smoothly.

But First, What Is a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist?

Medical insurance verification specialists are experts at clearing hurdles by quickly reviewing records, analyzing insurance plans, and verifying whether a patient has coverage or not so doctors can focus on healing instead of paperwork. Medical insurance verification specialists also serve as a second set of eyes when it comes to making sure an insurer is paying benefits correctly, which helps make certain that health care providers get paid fairly for services rendered while protecting them from fraud schemes.

What Qualifications Do Medical Insurance Verification Specialists Have?

This can vary based on the company employing them. In general, all companies will look for the following qualifications: • A high school diploma or GED. • Previous billing experience. • Knowledge of medical terminology. • Experience with insurance companies. • Clear communication skills and fluency in English. • Detail-oriented focus. Other companies will look for greater qualifications than this, such as a two-year college degree or greater, passing a certification exam, and completing a rigorous training program. For those who are at the supervisor level, there is usually a requirement that they have a degree in healthcare management or business administration. In this post, we’ve highlighted a bit about the role of a medical insurance verification specialist. If you want to learn more about how you can outsource your insurance verification, don’t hesitate to reach out! We offer a wide variety of solutions that can help improve the quality of your practice while boosting your bottom line, including healthcare CRMs and call centers. Not quite ready to outsource this task? Not a problem. Read up on how to verify medical insurance coverage on your own.

Essential Call Center Metrics and KPIs to Track for Success

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KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and it is a metric that you establish to measure a certain aspect of success. In this case, the KPIs will describe call center performance metrics.

Why are KPIs and metrics important?

KPIs are important because they assign a numerical value to objectively measure performance. Management and other stakeholders can use the call center metrics to objectively measure performance. Based on current and past performance, goals can be assigned. Managers can make important decisions to design plans to improve or maintain performance. The plans can then be evaluated after their implementation using the same KPIs and metrics.

What Are the Top Healthcare Call Center Metrics and KPIs to Track?

1. Agent Turnover Rate

Recruitment and training of agents are generally more expensive than retaining experienced agents. The agent turnover rate is a call center metric that measures the percentage of agents who abandon their position. If this metric is high, it will negatively impact customer satisfaction and overall team morale.

2. Percentage of Calls Blocked

If a patient calls a healthcare call center and receives a busy tone, this is considered a blocked call. This KPI measures the percentage of calls that are blocked. A call is typically blocked when there are no agents available to answer and all of the virtual waiting rooms are filled. Learning how to track a call to return a previously blocked call can help turn this metric around.

3. Average Waiting Time

This is a KPI that should be kept as small as possible, it measures the average wait time a patient spends on the phone before speaking to an agent. This indicator will help management determine how to schedule agents and the optimal number of agents to maintain on staff. If patients are kept waiting for too long, customer satisfaction will be negatively impacted.

4. Average Handle Time

This KPI measures the average amount of time an agent spends on the call helping the patient. This KPI does not necessarily have to be as short as possible as it will depend on the objective of the call. This KPI is related to caller satisfaction but is also used to determine staff performance and the number of callers needed to fulfill the call center’s demand.

5. Occupancy Rate

This rate measures the workload vs. capability of the agents. For example, if an agent spends an average of 20 hours per 40-hour workweek on live calls or completing the work derived from the calls, the occupancy rate would be 50%. Call center managers should generally aim for an occupancy rate that is as close to 100% as possible without overwhelming the agents.

6. Customer Satisfaction

All KPIs ultimately lead to this global KPI which measures the ultimate goal of making customers happy with the work of the call center. This metric is typically determined by surveying a sample of customers to determine how satisfied or unsatisfied they were by the work of the call center in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. For more information on improving your healthcare call center metrics, read the following: What Can Hospital Call Center Best Practices Tell You About Its Quality?

5 Important Healthcare Call Center Metrics

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When you invest in patient engagement solutions, you want to know that they are doing more than just taking tasks off your hands; you want to feel confident that they work. To evaluate this, you need to know what metrics to look at. Every industry has different metrics to look at. This means that when evaluating healthcare call center metrics, you won’t be looking at the same things as for an online retailer. So, what should you be keeping an eye on?

5 Essential Call Center Metrics in Healthcare

1. First-Call Resolution:

In any industry, customers get frustrated when they have to call multiple times to resolve an issue. But in the healthcare industry, getting the runaround isn’t just frustrating; it is downright dangerous. Before outsourcing your phone service, make sure the company’s healthcare call center metrics reflect a very high resolution of concerns with the first call.

2. Agent Efficiency:

This metric of healthcare call centers measures how quickly agents are able to resolve questions and concerns. Patients don’t want to spend an hour getting an issue taken care of, and depending on the situation, they flat out can’t wait that long. Look for a good average time from answering the phone to call completion.

3. Response Time:

We’ve all been there: stuck on hold, waiting for an agent to get on the line. Most of us have a few horror stories about 30-45 minute waits. Once again, this is unacceptable and risky in the medical field. Ensure the companies you consider have solid healthcare call center metrics for response time.

4. Customer Satisfaction:

How happy are customers when they get off the phone with a given call center’s agents? Any quality call center should be able to provide data from surveys completed at the end of each call. You want to get as close as you can to every patient being happy with their experience.

5. Customer Retention:

This one is harder to measure, but call centers should start their contract by evaluating how well a practice is retaining patients, then reassess this on a regular basis to determine how their work has impacted retention. Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed at the idea of getting and assessing metrics for multiple call center companies? Turn to Guideway Care. We offer a full slate of solutions related to patient engagement and experience that will help you better meet the needs of your clients.

What Is Insurance Verification and Eligibility?

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As a medical provider, you need to be prepared to work directly with insurance providers to help patients maximize their benefits and cover the cost of treatment. Insurance verification and determining eligibility is central to this. But how do you do insurance verification and navigating the often convoluted water of eligibility? Here is what you should know.

What Is Insurance Verification and Eligibility?

Insurance verification refers to checking the status of a given patient’s insurance coverage as well as verifying their eligibility for having a given service covered. Once you have completed the medical insurance verification process, you should know the following: • If the patient’s policy is active. • When the policy expires. • If you are in-network. • If the given procedure is covered under their benefits. • If it is, how much of it is covered. Insurance verification is one of the first steps to take with any patient and should be done before any services are rendered. If not, you can put the patient in a position where they have to pay out of pocket but don’t have room in their budget to do so.

What Is the Insurance Verification Process Like?

This depends on the route you take. The easiest method is to outsource this task to insurance verification services companies. These are HIPAA-compliant providers who contact insurance providers on your behalf using the information the patient provided. If you have clients input this information through the medical patient portal, the entire process requires almost no work on your end. If you don’t outsource it, you will need to contact the insurance company directly. If you are confident that the insurance policy is valid and active, you also might be able to find information online. For this, you look for the specific tier of policy from the given provider and see if there is any information online about coverage and limits. Ultimately, this method is lengthy and difficult, often requiring at least once employee pretty much dedicated to the verification task. We strongly suggest outsourcing this to save both time and money. In fact, we can help. At Guideway Care, we offer a wide variety of services, including healthcare engagement solutions and insurance verification. With us at your side, you can grow your practice, increase productivity, and ensure your patients are always pleased with their experience. To learn more, schedule your free consultation.

Why Is Telehealth Important for Rural Providers?

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Time has not been kind to rural healthcare providers and their communities. Over the last decade, numerous rural hospitals have shuttered, and medical practices have been unable to sustain the cost of running a practice in P.O. box counties. The result is a medical desert encompassing large swaths of the United States, leaving millions underserved. What happens when you need a doctor or hospital, but the closest one is over an hour’s drive away? And what about those who cannot spare three to four hours in their day to make the trip there, their appointment, and the trip back? Or those who lack transportation and rely on the kindness of neighbors to get around? In the past, these individuals simply suffered or even lost their lives. Now, telemedicine in rural areas is filling in the gap.

Understanding Telemedicine

When we picture telemedicine, there are two things that come to mind: the old school phone conferencing system and the more modern video conferencing that took hold during the pandemic. However, telemedicine is a bit more complex than that. It can be offered directly by a medical practice or outsourced to healthcare call centers. It might rely on phone calls or video conferencing, but it could also include remote monitoring apps, cloud storage for imaging, and patients education resources. It can even include group therapies and other non-one-on-one treatments.

The Importance of Telehealth in Rural Areas

Patients Can Access Specialized Services

In many rural communities, the only doctor is a general practitioner who treats the whole family, offering everything from childhood vaccines to obstetrics care. But sometimes, you need a specialist. When this is the case, patients often have to commute to cities hours away, staying overnight to make their appointment. Telemedicine allows those in rural areas to speak with specialists and get their assessment and guidance without having to travel, book hotel rooms, and incur significant costs that insurance won’t cover.

Rural Hospitals Can Increase Their Staff

One of the reasons rural hospitals are closing is that they don’t have the staff to sustain them. In addition to paying less than hospitals in cities, many doctors just aren’t interested in relocating to work at them. However, telemedicine in rural communities allows doctors to work remotely. They can attend consultations virtually, with the in-person session being led by a registered nurse or other healthcare professional. The doctor can deliver instructions while the nurse carries out the exam and relays what they observe. Together, they can come to a diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan.

It Serves the Underserved

Ultimately, the biggest benefit of telehealth in rural communities is its ability to reach the underserved. While there is a lot of focus on poverty in urban areas, there is also plenty in rural areas as well. And unlike in cities, these individuals cannot just hop on the bus or metro to get to a doctor, and there are far fewer free clinics available to them. For them, telemedicine is often the only medicine that is accessible, and is essential to their wellbeing. To better serve your rural clients, look into virtual patient engagement solutions, including those related to telemedicine. For assistance in reaching these patients, speak with Guideway Care. We offer healthcare internet marketing solutions that work for providers of all sizes.

The Importance of Insurance Verification for Your Dental Practice

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As a full-service dental practice, you want to make the services you offer as accessible as possible and ensure the patient experience is a smooth one.

Central to this is medical insurance verification. While a small task for your office, this has a significant impact on your patients, often determining whether or not they can afford treatment.

Delays and snags with insurance verification can harm patient retention and earn your dental practice a bad reputation. At Guideway Care, we support dental practices in the insurance verification process with automated tools, human support, and accurate reporting that help patients understand their coverage limits and what they can and cannot afford.

Why Insurance Verification Is Important for Dental Practices

Compared to standard health insurance, dental insurance is often a bit tricker. The limits and terms are different, and patients are less likely to have a full understanding of what their policy covers than they would with general health coverage. Additionally, these policies are typically separate and might even be with a different company than their primary provider.

Insurance verification for your dental practice is a central component of patient support. Your average patient isn’t equipped to navigate insurance jargon and doesn’t have the time to spend hours on the phone waiting to talk to a customer service representative. Many of them barely have the time to get to your office and receive treatment.

This means patients rely on your staff to complete their medical insurance verification for them and let them know how far their coverage goes and what they will need to pay out of pocket.

When you don’t, or you give the wrong answer and then they have to pay out of pocket, it reflects poorly on you.

Why Insurance Verification Can Be Difficult for Your Practice

At the same time, it isn’t always easy for your practice to take care of insurance verification themselves. This is especially true if your receptionist and billing department are one and the same.

Your support staff already has a lot on their plate, and adding verification to this list can overwhelm them, creating a ripple effect that throws off more than your billing.

This often leaves dentists in a difficult position: overwhelm the staff, hire someone just for insurance, or risk harming the patient experience? Luckily, there is an alternative.

Outsourcing Dental Insurance Verification

The importance of insurance verification for dental practices cannot be overstated. But if taking it on yourself has your ship sinking, you should consider outsourcing the task.

Guideway Care offers solutions for healthcare providers that take the weight off their shoulders while ensuring patients get the well-rounded experience of a fully-staffed practice. As a healthcare advertising company, we can also take on all your marketing and branding tasks as well.

To learn more or schedule your demo, contact Guideway Care today.

 

How Patient Appointment Reminders are Changing the Healthcare Industry

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Automation has helped to simplify and improve many of the processes that keep medical practices running. Take medical appointment reminders, for example. In the past, receptionists had to spend hours each day calling patients to ensure they were aware of their upcoming appointment and that they would make it. Even with the phone call, many patients would get busy and forget to attend their appointment.
With every no-show, practices lost revenue. But now, things are different.

The Patient Appointment Reminders Revolution

Now, automated systems connect with your patient scheduling program and send out reminders to patients. Not only can patients get a call the day before, but they can also get multiple reminders across various platforms at varying times.

Read more: How To Schedule Patients Effectively: Medical Appointment Scheduling Guidelines

For example, your patient who works at a busy law firm might want a call to her receptionist the day before, an email to herself that night, and a text two hours before her appointment. Not only is this possible, but your staff doesn’t have to schedule all of these reminders. The patient can do it on their own through your medical center patient portal.

Ways Patient Appointment Reminders Improve Healthcare

You Save Time

There are two key ways you as a provider save time with automated appointment reminders. First, you no longer need staff to dedicate time to the task, freeing them up to attend to other matters that can speed up your processes and keep appointments on track.

Second, you don’t end up with as many gaps in your day due to patients failing to show. While on the surface, that sounds like getting time back, you know from experience how much it can throw off the whole day.

You Save Money

Depending on the size of your practice, calling patients for appointment reminders could be a part-time position. But even if your practice is small enough that it is merely as a task for your primary receptionist, automated reminders will save you money since patients will show for more appointments, allowing you to bill them or their insurance providers in full.

Patients Take Control

If your automation includes letting patients set reminders through your medical center patient portal, they get to take control over the process. Whereas regular calls often feel invasive, when the patient schedules the time and method of contact, it feels natural and personalized. It turns appointment reminders into patient engagement solutions.

Patient appointment reminder automation is typically offered by healthcare advertising companies as part of their outsourcing and automation packages. To learn more about your options, schedule a demo with Guideway Care.

6 Signs for Outsourcing Your Medical Call Center

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Healthcare today has moved beyond being purely transactional and now value-based care is the focus. Value-based performance centers around patient experience , efficient processes, and good customer service. These in turn lead to higher patient retention and revenue. One of the cornerstones of value-based healthcare is an efficient medical call center. Additionally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires annual hospital submissions from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This data is used in classifying the payment level of healthcare providers within the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). This financial incentive from the federal government hinges on service measures such as staff responsiveness. With a growing practice, maintaining stellar service in your call center can become exceedingly difficult. How do you know when to outsource your healthcare call center?

6 Signs to Outsource Your Medical Call Center

Low Healthcare Call Center Efficiency

If patient hold times exceed 60 seconds, more than 5% of callers hang up before reaching support, or call rerouting accuracy falls below 99%, your practice may be struggling with understaffing or insufficient training. These issues can negatively impact the patient experience and the quality of care. In such cases, outsourcing specialized clinical support, such as a nurse triage service, can help manage medical calls more effectively, improve patient outcomes, reduce internal workload, and ensure faster, more accurate call handling.

High Call Center Staff Turnover

Usually, in-house call centers are entry-level positions staffed by people who have basic front desk training. This is an inadequate skillset for a healthcare environment. Their skill limitation will show up as an inability to handle patients properly or dissatisfaction and resignation in favor of other jobs within the organization or elsewhere.

No Ongoing Coaching and Training for Call Center Staff

Employees who feel ill-equipped to serve patients will be frustrated and are more likely to quit. More importantly, they will transfer their frustrations to the patient with the poor service that they deliver. This leaves a lasting negative impression on patients and affects customer retention.

Dissatisfaction Among Referring Physicians

Specialist visits constitute more than 50% of outpatient cases and one in three patients is referred to a specialist each year. This is a huge chunk of the business that could be underperforming due to an inefficient call center. If patients are not getting through, neither are primary care physicians with their referrals. This is money down the drain for your practice.

Inconsistent service and procedures

A practice with several departments should have a call center that services and is in touch with all of them seamlessly. A lack of this integration shows in the need for multiple calls for the patient to receive all the care and tests they need.

Poor Call Data Entry and Review

Data is a key building block of service delivery and customer relations. Data quality is essential in making sure that you’re giving your patients the best and your practice stays on target, financially and service-wise. If you cannot positively answer these questions, it means your call center needs an overhaul. 1   Is your call center verifying insurance and entering the correct billing and payment information? 2  Do you know how much your appointment volume grows year on year? 3  Are you able to monitor dropped patient handoffs? 4  Do you regularly review data from calls and your medical patient portal against your guidelines? 5  Do you have the data and tools to evaluate customer service quality? Outsourcing your call center can free up both time and resources to expand your business and offer better service both via call and on your medical website. Contact us today to find the right call center solutions for your practice is that it’s more effective.

How To Use Healthcare Call Centers To Provide A Better Patient Experience

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Healthcare call centers have been used for decades by practices in order to save on staffing costs and improve efficiency. Unfortunately, hospital call centers haven’t always been the best at handling patient needs. A healthcare management consulting firm found that when 20 hospital call centers were called, 90% of them were completely unhelpful.

These call centers serve an important purpose, as they help triage calls to the right department or provider and can also help with insurance verification, billing, and collections. But should hospital call center investment be cut, or is there a better way to use them? Let’s find out.

Improving Patient Experience with Call Centers

Train your call centers to be compassionate with callers.

Some healthcare call centers may insist that their staff needs minimal training, however in order to get the results you want, you’ll need to use your understanding of your patients to help them serve your patients right.

When patients call about a medical matter, they’re in a vulnerable position and need to be treated with basic human dignity and compassion. Call centers aren’t exactly known for this, and although the reasons for this are complex, staff can be trained to provide a compassionate experience for patients who call your phone.

In your call center training, whether you use a manual or not, you need to make sure that callers are treated with respect and compassion. Otherwise, you risk ruining the chance of getting a patient before they’ve even set foot in your hospital or practice.

Simplify and unify your processes.

This seems more like a technical or business consideration, but overly complex processes can bleed into the patient experience and cause serious problems down the line. If you’re using multiple call centers to handle the load, then you want to make sure that all software suites used are compatible with each other and that a patient’s data can be accessed the same way no matter which call center they were directed to.

Several healthcare companies have formed as a result of mergers and acquisitions, and this can cause unneeded complexity that would otherwise not exist. Making sure that all processes are streamlined throughout the organization will make the patient’s experience much smoother as it can cut down on wait times and reduce the risk of errors.

Invest in multi-channel communications.

Although the call center is still the backbone of patient-hospital communications, it doesn’t mean that patients are always able to call. A Harris Poll found that 64% of consumers would choose texting instead of voice for customer service.

By investing in multi-channel communications, you’re able to connect with patients in the way that they prefer. You also give them the ability to connect with you any time they want. Use a call center that is willing and able to connect with patients through multiple channels.

Guideway Care provides multi-channel patient engagement solutions such as transitional care management turnkey services, medical patient portals, and healthcare call center services in order to improve both patient experience and your bottom line.

How To Verify Medical Insurance Coverage: Medical Insurance Verification Guide

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The medical insurance verification process is one that is well-known to be annoying at best and disastrous at worst. A simple clerical error or missed question can lead to a patient’s coverage being denied. It’s paramount that you get the right information from the patient in order to prevent denials and to maximize reimbursements.

In this article, you’ll learn how to verify medical insurance in a few easy steps while minimizing the risk of missing crucial information.

Steps on How To Do Insurance Verification

Make sure your patient’s information is up to date.

Without up-to-date information, insurance may deny coverage. The best way to make sure information is up to date is to verify a patient’s information with the patient before they come in.

The important information you need is:

  • Full name
  • Date of birth
  • The name of the primary insured
  • Name of the insurance provider
  • Insurance provider’s contact information
  • Insurance ID
  • Group number

There are a lot of reasons why this information may change. A patient may switch employers, get married or divorced, have a child, or switch insurance for any other reason. Also, make sure to request an up-to-date photo ID and the original insurance card. Make a scanned copy or a printed copy and keep it on file.

Contact the insurance company.

It’s recommended to contact the insurance company at least 72 hours before the patient comes to your office. This will reduce the risk of being denied and will allow you to have the information you need.

You should have gotten the payer’s contact info from the patient. If you were unable to do so, you can find this information online on the payer’s website.

Get the necessary benefits information from the insurance company.

Verifying insurance can be like a game of telephone. For this reason, you’re going to want to clarify benefits information with the insurance company directly. You’ll want to get the following information:

  • Confirm the basic information. Patient’s name, policy and group number, the name of the primary, and the relationship of the primary to the patient
  • Whether the patient is covered on the date of service
  • Whether your practice is in or out of network. If you’re out of network, then ask which services are covered.
  • Copay and/or coinsurance information
  • Patient’s deductible
  • Coverage limitations

There could be more information that is necessary to process the claim. Be sure to keep good records of everything in order to help the process go smoothly. If a patient has secondary insurance, then you’ll have to go through these steps with that insurance as well and you’ll also have to confirm how much will be covered by the secondary provider.

Get verification of co-pay and answer questions that the patient may have.

You’ll need to collect a patient’s due co-pay and make sure that they get a receipt. A patient will need this information to verify their own health insurance. Also, answer any questions that the patient has about their insurance, as it pertains to your services. This will make sure that the patient understands what they will need to pay and what insurance will cover.

Read more: What Is Insurance Verification and Eligibility?

Guideway Care offers patient engagement solutions for medical practices of all sizes. Guideway Care is also a provider of medical online marketing services to help increase your patient volumes and grow your brand’s presence.

Qualities of a Successful Medical Information Call Center Agent

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When a patient calls a hospital, they’re usually directed to a call center whose job is to triage them to the right department and get them the information they need so that they’re satisfied enough to end the conversation. Call centers are used for appointment scheduling, providing information about the hospital, insurance matters, and more.

Now, think about it from a patient’s point of view. They’re in a vulnerable place and they’re doing something that they’d rather not do, whether that’s scheduling an appointment or trying to figure out when they can see their sick relative. You want someone with the right qualities to answer the phone and provide the support that the patient needs.

So what qualities does a successful medical call center agent have?

Qualities That A Medical Call Center Agent Should Have

The ability to communicate with compassion.

When someone calls a hospital call center, they’re not exactly in the best frame of mind. They might be short with an agent, or they might express sadness and frustration with their situation. Someone who wants to see their sick relative is not looking to waste a lot of time on the phone and might be feeling overwhelmed.

A successful medical call center agent is compassionate and shows it through their tone of voice and their choice of words. An agent should show that they understand what the person on the other line is going through and that they’re not alone, and that the agent is there to help.

A willingness and ability to handle pressure.

Medical call center jobs are not easy, and some situations can literally be life or death. Having the ability to work under pressure is key for a call center agent because of the stakes. This might be something you want to filter out during the hiring process, but training for high-pressure situations is also recommended.

A thorough understanding of your hospital’s or practice’s offerings.

Nobody wants to be directed to someone on the phone that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. By training a call center agent on what your hospital or practice does, they will be able to sound more knowledgeable over the phone and they’ll be in a better position to represent your brand in the most positive light.

Attention to detail

As stated earlier, these jobs are pretty high stakes and one crucial missed detail could be a problem for things like insurance and relaying important information about an appointment. A good call center agent should have a high level of attention to detail and they must be able to juggle multiple things while keeping those details straight.

Ability to retain and recall important information

This can’t be understated, because call center agents are bombarded with information that they might not be able to record right then and there. Remembering key information for when someone gets on the line next time will be the difference between providing poor service and excellent service. Encourage agents to utilize their resources and keep good notes so that they can use their recall abilities on the most important info.

Guideway Care is a top provider of patient engagement solutions for healthcare businesses of all sizes.

Patient Pre-Registration Tips for a Better Experience

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Check-in processes are notorious for consuming staff resources and making patients wait longer than they have to before they receive care. One excellent strategy for improving your check-in process is to implement patient pre-registration.

How should patient pre-registration be handled? Does your practice need to improve its patient registration system? Let’s discuss.

Why Most Practices’ Patient Registration Process Is So Awful

Patient registration is a nightmare. There are so many data points that need to be collected, such as demographic information, contact information, appointment scheduling information, health history, and what kind of health insurance coverage the patient has. All of this is absolutely necessary to make sure the hospital is able to get reimbursed by insurance. Not only that, much of this information needs to be collected and saved into a practice’s CRM; in the healthcare industry, CRMs are vital to maximizing revenue.

Because of all the information that needs to be collected, having a patient register in the hospital can take a very long time and turn into a very painful process for both the patient and hospital staff.

The Solution: Patient Pre-Registration

Patient pre-registration is when part or all of the registration process is performed before the visit. This method allows the patient to fill out the necessary information on their own time.

Patient pre-registration can save a great deal of time for staff and patients. The process typically starts one of several ways:

  • Over the phone. The registration process is conducted by a new patient coordinator and starts before the visit.
  • Via mail. The practice sends forms to the patient via mail and expects them to mail back a completed form or submit it on the day of the visit.
  • Through the patient portal. The patient signs into their patient portal and completes pre-registration there.
  • Using online forms, either downloaded or on the Web. Similar to the mail, the patient fills out the form and submits it online.

In order to get the benefits out of patient pre-registration, it’s recommended that healthcare providers follow these tips:

Use electronic forms if possible. Electronic forms can integrate with your CRM, stay HIPAA compliant, collect e-signatures, and ideally can be done from a patient’s phone.

Train staff correctly. New patient coordinators need to be able to enter patient information into the Healthcare CRM directly, guide patients through pre-registration, answer any questions that the patient has, and schedule the patient in correctly using the information provided.

Automate as much of the process as possible. Patients should receive automatic reminders to pre-register. Staff should not have to spend time scanning pre-registration forms to input them into another system later.

How Mobile Health Clinics Make Care More Accessible to Vulnerable Patients

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Mobile health clinics have been used for decades, particularly in the developing world, in order to provide low or no-cost care to vulnerable populations. Due to the healthcare situation in the US, they number about 2,000 as of 2017.

A CDC report found that about 17% of patients do not have access to a place where they can regularly get care, regardless of their insurance. As a result, millions of people are not able to get care from a primary care physician, nor do they have much access to preventative care. Ultimately, the healthcare system has to eat the costs associated with this. Patients without access to preventative or primary care may end up with an emergency acute condition that could have been prevented.

Healthcare marketing trends indicate that mobile health clinics may continue to grow in popularity as vulnerable populations grow.

How Mobile Health Management Services work

Mobile health clinics exist for the purpose of providing healthcare services to vulnerable patients that they would otherwise be unable to access. There exist barriers to healthcare access, such as a lack of transportation, a lack of time to utilize these services, cost, and a general distrust of doctors and the American health system.

These mobile clinics are a remarkable way to provide healthcare services to underserved populations. According to Harvard Medical School’s Mobile Health Map, it’s estimated that 6.5 million visits to mobile health clinics occur annually. 60% of patients who use them are uninsured.

The most common services that these mobile health clinics offer are preventative screenings, primary care services, and dental services. These services, often taken for granted by people who get them every year, are highly effective at improving long term health outcomes. Not only that, they’ve been found to be highly cost effective. The average annual operational cost of a mobile program is $429,000 and returns $12 for every $1 invested.

Goals of Mobile Health Clinics

There are three main goals to mobile health clinics. The first is to provide an entry point for access to the healthcare system. Vulnerable populations may have a level of distrust in the system, so an easy, comfortable access point will help them become more engaged in their health.

The second goal is to remove barriers to care that are due to logistics. For example, urban working poor individuals may not be able to take time off work during the time that most clinics are open. Or, they may not be anywhere near an accessible health clinic.

The third goal is to fill the service gap that exists in these communities. People in these communities may not have access due to the factors described above, and these mobile health clinics provide a great way to bridge that gap.

All in all, mobile health clinics or healthcare call centers provide an excellent way to help underserved communities get access to affordable care.

Why Do Patients Miss Medical Appointments? How To Reduce No Shows

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Having patients miss their appointments can represent a large expense for a medical practice. It wastes time, it lowers revenue, and it often throws off the entire rhythm of the organization!
It’s important to understand why patients miss their medical appointments, though. This way, you can implement strategies to reduce no-shows and encourage your patients to arrive for their appointment on time.

So why do patients miss medical appointments?

Reasons Why Patients Miss Medical Appointments

Patients report many different reasons for missing their medical appointments, but these reasons aren’t always obvious to those who run medical practices. Some of the reasons they cite are:

Unable to make it due to logistics

For many people, life sometimes gets in the way of being able to make an appointment. Patients report being unable to take off work, secure childcare, and arrange for transportation.
There doesn’t seem like there should be a reason why a patient doesn’t give notice. But patients are often unaware of how they should give notice, or simply don’t believe it’s all that necessary because they lack the understanding of how medical practices work.

Doesn’t understand the scheduling system

Many patients don’t know how medical practices operate. They may think that missing an appointment is no big deal for a practice. They think that it might reduce someone else’s wait time, or that it would simply be filled with another patient. This is mainly due to a lack of understanding about medical practice operations.

Negative emotions surrounding the appointment

Going to a doctor’s office is scary for a lot of people. The doctor’s office is where people get painful shots and get scary health news. It’s also a bit of an inconvenience to people.

Feeling disrespected or inconvenienced

Some patients feel like they don’t get the respect they deserve at the doctor’s office. They may be told to wait for a long time, or they might be told that the things they’re doing for their health are wrong. This breeds a distrust of doctors and the medical establishment as a whole.

Tips for Reducing No Shows

Optimize your reminders.

It’s not enough to just call them a few days before the appointment. There are other tools at your disposal.

Using automated reminders to call patients at certain points of time can greatly reduce the amount of staff time you spend on making reminder calls.

SMS reminders are an easy and less intrusive way to remind people about their appointments. Sending them one at different intervals will reduce the chance that they forget.

Make it easy for people to put their appointments into their Google calendars by including a Calendar invite link in your emails.

Educate patients.

Nobody likes to be reprimanded for being late, but patients need to understand that missing appointments doesn’t do anyone any favors. Make sure they understand that a missed appointment does not free up a slot for someone else.

How The Health Insurance Verification Process Works

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One thing that no medical professional likes to deal with is insurance. Insurance is a hassle, it’s not always easy to comply with, and they have so many different requirements. What’s worse is that it can seem quite mysterious to those who don’t go through the process day after day.

We’re here to tell you how the health insurance verification process works, what goes into it, and what makes it operate.

What Is The Health Insurance Verification Process?

The health insurance verification process is a series of steps that checks whether or not the patient admitted has the ability to make a reimbursable claim to their health insurance provider. The process is complicated and goes through many different people at both the healthcare provider and the insurance provider.

Steps In The Health Insurance Verification Process

Patient Scheduling

The patient makes an appointment with the doctor and the doctor schedules the patient in. The registration can be done through self-scheduling to make the process quick and streamlined. New patients are entered into the healthcare provider’s database. In case of emergencies, the registration may be performed at the hospital where intake happens.

Patient Enrollment

The patient’s demographic data and medical history are recorded or referenced by the healthcare provider. This is to identify the patient accurately and make sure that insurance has the right patient.

Eligibility and Verification

This is generally the ugly part. Insurance claim details are then cross-referenced by the healthcare provider to make sure that the patient is, in fact, eligible to make a claim. Since insurance fraud is common, this is a necessary step that healthcare providers have to do. This is where health insurance verification services come in, offering patient conversion solutions that can save a considerable amount of time.

Authorization

Insurance verification establishes the eligibility of a patient’s insurance claim, but not the requirement of the insurance provider to actually reimburse the patient. The authorization process binds the insurance payer to authorize the claim through a legally binding promise to pay a specified amount. This step should be given careful scrutiny as to prevent denied claims, which can cause a great deal of stress. Here, the Role of a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist becomes pivotal in managing the process effectively.

Updating Patient

If there are any changes to the claim, the healthcare provider must notify the patient of said changes. This process is important as patients should not end up with a surprise bill at the end of the whole ordeal.

Updating Medical Billing System

Healthcare providers must update the billing system to make sure that correct charges were recorded. Otherwise, this can have a drastic effect on the organization’s accounting.

Claims transmission

At last, the claim submission request is sent to the insurance provider. This is the final step in the health insurance verification process. For assistance with any part of this process, Reach Out to us for expert support and guidance.

How To Improve Patient Care Through The Call Center

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Patient Care begins with the Call Center. When a patient phones into the Healthcare facility and the call center agent answer, that is their first experience with your healthcare business. If the patient is treated rudely, questions are not answered, or some other negative experience occurs, that patient is left with a negative impression of your healthcare facility. Healthcare Call Centers can implement these five steps to improve patient care and satisfaction.

 

1. Invest in training Healthcare Call Center Agents

Call center agents in the healthcare setting need to be provided with qualitative training regularly. Set clear customer service expectations and provide scripts for routine call activities such as appointment scheduling, medication refills, hours of operation, directions, or routine questions. Call center representatives who are adequately properly will leave patients with a positive impression of your healthcare facility.

2. Encourage Empathy in your Call Center Agents

Call center agents need to become more patient-focused. Patients want to speak to a knowledgeable, compassionate human being, not a robotic answering service. Focusing on the caller’s needs in the Health Call Center is an essential step in providing quality care and the best patient contact.

3. Focus on Patient Satisfaction

Phone agents need quiet, non-distracting environments, both for themselves and for the person to whom they are speaking. They also need a place where privacy is assured, so patients feel comfortable talking with them regarding their healthcare concerns. The Medical Call Center can facilitate a high level of satisfaction by ensuring every call meets the patient’s expectations and needs.

4. Use every opportunity as a Patient outreach

A healthcare facility call center can perform reminders for follow-up appointments, health risk assessments, preventative care reminders, and referral reminders.  Contacting the patient with valuable information makes them feel that the facility cares about their health while leading them to better health outcomes.

5. Implement a Patient Retention Program

An experienced call center agent should be able to use every opportunity to positively represent the healthcare brand and handle issues that come into the call center confidently.  They should be trained to identify patient needs and know where to direct patients if they do not know the answer to the patient’s healthcare concerns.

Medical call center services provide a tremendous benefit for both medical facilities and for the patients who call them. Quick, 24/7-phone support with empathetic, patient-focused agents will improve turnaround time, and result in happy, satisfied callers. In turn, that should enhance your healthcare brand image.

Read more: What Is Patient Retention and Why Does It Matter for Your Practice?

What Can Hospital Call Center Practices Reveal About Quality?

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Frequently Overlooked, a Medical Call Center’s Best Practices Can be One of the Most Accurate Indicators of Its Capabilities and Priorities

If you’ve been in the market for an outsourced hospital call center vendor and have been doing online research, you’ve probably seen some Web pages, articles and blogs that talk about hospital call center best practices. If so, it’s likely you didn’t give them much attention, and for good reason: That type of content tends to be geared for people that operate in-house medical call centers rather than those looking to partner with an outbound call center. Instead, hospital call center marketing content more often focuses on its key advantages for customers and its positive performance metrics. There’s certainly nothing wrong about that. Actually, it pretty accurately describes what’s on our medical call center service page! Still, learning about a medical call center’s best practices can provide some remarkably useful insight into what it can really do for you, especially if you have a smaller practice or specialized service line like bariatric surgery. Why? It is because a hospital call center best practices represent the standards a vendor has for all its customers. The challenge is to find this information, which is why I’m sharing two of our own medical call center best practices to give you a better idea of what all this means.

Best Practice #1: Create a Seamless Patient Experience

A patient should consistently have the highest quality experience, no matter whether they speak to somebody in your office or to somebody in our call center. A tremendous amount of trust is required for a medical practice to let call center agents not only speak for them, but to speak as them when answering calls from patients. This becomes even more precarious when the call center needs access to patient electronic health record (EHR) systems for scheduling appointments. That is why we are routinely refining our solution sets for capturing specific scripting and scheduling protocols. That information is used to create a granular process flow that guides our agents through every step when they are speaking with a patient on the phone. We also ensure that our agents are highly-trained to perform as if they were hired for an in-house call center—which typically means knowing the EMR system the client uses. Nearly all of our clients use a cloud-based or other type of secure system, which enables us to remotely log-in to their system to assist with patient scheduling during calls.

Best Practice #2: Optimize Efficiency

A hospital call center’s speed and accuracy directly impact patient acquisition and patient retention rates. Every call counts. There’s ample evidence that missed calls translate into lost opportunities to schedule appointments with new and existing patients. It’s great to be ready for call volume spikes by having in-house or outsourced agents at the ready, but that’s not always an economically sound strategy. Instead, it’s better to anticipate when they will happen. We regularly analyze call volume data to identify trends in call volumes, which helps us better coordinate optimal solutions for our clients. But there’s much more to providing seamless and efficient patient experiences than answering calls quickly. When call volumes spike and the pressure is on, the chances to mishandle calls increase—and that’s only if the caller doesn’t get impatient if their calls are not answered in what they consider to be a reasonable amount of time. This is where accuracy becomes crucial, and it is why we get granular with following a client’s specific protocols. For example, if we know certain doctors only treats certain conditions on certain days—and only accept certain insurance—we can more efficiently schedule the patient. Not only is the patient satisfied because his or her needs were met quickly, but the call center agent can more swiftly return to other calls. Together, these two hospital call center best practices support our goals to be more than a hospital answering service and to help our clients enjoy better financial rewards via better patient outcomes.

As Guideway Care Central/Western Regional Director, Chris Stearns is one of our key healthcare IT experts.

Guideway Care is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.

How to Choose the Best Outsourced Medical Call Center Partner

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Throughout the past several weeks, we’ve shared a series of blogs as a preface to the publication of our new white paper, Outsourced Medical Call Centers: Defining Success and Selecting the Best Partner. So far, we’ve explored various important subjects, including:

• Observations about medical call center statistics

• Misunderstood aspects about outsourced medical call centers

• Key advantages to using a medical call center

This time, we want to touch on some points the white paper makes about how to choose the best medical call center (for which some also use the terms healthcare call center, hospital call center and healthcare contact center). Similar to how there is often no one-size-fits-all for how hospitals provide treatment for patients, there is no universal solution for a how a hospital can use or select a medical call center. This becomes all the more valid when evaluating the pros and cons of in-house vs. outsourced medical call centers, whether for part- or full-time service. For example, when a hospital has a new patient with an uncertain medical condition, it will generally conduct a thorough examination to identify symptoms (problems) so that the proper treatment (solutions) can be prescribed. This is an excellent analogy for hospitals that are evaluating its healthcare call center needs and/or are exploring outsourced medical call center partners. The process for selecting the best outsourced medical call center is not unlike partnering with most other vendors; it requires analysis of several considerations to determine goals and optimize priorities.

Define Your “Value” Beyond “Cost”

For virtually all hospitals, the cost for an outsourced medical call center service will be the key factor in their decisions. Therefore, having a budget may expedite the process for potential vendors to quickly gauge how well they can satisfy a hospital’s medical call center objectives. However, efforts to define value beyond cost and budgets should not be taken lightly, as they not only help shape a hospital’s goals and expectations for its hospital contact center, but they also provide a framework for examining the quality of its potential vendor relationship. The following is a comprehensive series of crucial considerations.

Qualifications

• How thoroughly does the vendor describe its service’s capabilities and customer service?

• How well regarded is the vendor? Can it provide testimonials, third-party reviews, awards, etc.?

• How reliable is the vendor? Does it have a history of proven innovation and experience?

• How well does the vendor support its customers? What are its onboarding procedures?

Customization and Scalability

• Does the vendor’s service meet the hospital’s specific needs and objectives?

• Can the service be customized to meet current needs and objectives?

• Can the service be reduced or expanded to meet future needs and objectives?

HIPAA Compliance and Confidentiality

• Can the service demonstrate HIPAA compliance and patient confidentiality across all channels, including e-mail or text messages?

• Are its networks and data storage systems secure?

Analytics and Metrics

• Does the vendor provide analytics and metrics reports—and do they meet the hospital’s needs?

• Can the vendor demonstrate how it tracks accuracy and abandonment rates?

Identify Your Decision-makers and Delegate Responsibilities

Hospitals typically require buy-in from various departments and committees when choosing new vendors and suppliers, and an outsourced medical call center is no exception. Likewise, it is important to know which departments and staff will ensure success after a vendor is selected and the medical call center is activated.

Stakeholder and Decision-makers

• What departments or staff members should be consulted when determining needs and objectives for the medical call center?

• What departments or staff members will need to approve decisions to request proposals or finalize an agreement?

Onboarding

• Immediately after an outsourced medical call center is selected and a service is activated, what departments or staff members will need to be onboarded?

Detail Your Patient Demographics

Having a firm grasp on a hospital’s patient demographics may help it identify which potential outsourced medical call center partners can best serve its patients.

• Medical/Treatment Specialties: Will the medical call center handle general calls or will it work with specific departments, specialties or centers of excellence?

• Geography: What local, state or regional areas does the hospital serve?

• Multiculturalism: Are there significant numbers of patients whose first languages are not English?

• What percentage speak languages other than English?

Plan for Timing

Although more logistic matters should be addressed during onboarding after an outsourced medical call center is selected, it may be advantageous to be clear about logistical expectations prior to seeking potential partners.

• When would you expect to use your medical call center service?

• When would you want to launch your medical call center service?

Hopefully this blog series has given a better understanding of medical call centers, and we will continue to publish more blogs that provide our unique perspective on this invaluable service!
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Guideway Care is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams, including support for a nurse triage service. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.

Top 5 Healthcare and Medical Call Center Advantages and Benefits

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In recent weeks, we’ve discussed medical call centers (which are also sometimes called healthcare call centers, hospital call centers and healthcare contact centers) in two distinct ways:

• Observations about medical call center statistics

• Misunderstood aspects about outsourced medical call centers

What has yet to be discussed—or answered—is a simple question: What are the advantages and benefits of medical call centers? Although there is no single reason for why two-thirds of all U.S. hospitals utilize a medical call center (either outsourced or in-house), it can be argued their popularity is related to the many advantages and benefits that yield better experiences for their customers and superb value for the hospitals. In fact, according to a study referenced in our soon-to-be-published white paper, Outsourced Medical Call Centers: Defining Success and Selecting the Best Partner, we demonstrate healthcare call centers improve:

• Caller Satisfaction

• Department Satisfaction

• ROI

• Savings to Organization

Call Centers Improve Patient Engagement

Although it is often uncomfortable to think of healthcare as an “industry” and patients as “customers,” the reality is the transactional nature of healthcare subjects it to many of the same principles that guide the success of traditional retail and commercial businesses—which includes customer service. Although the Internet and smartphones have emerged as new and popular communication channels for providing healthcare customer service, live agent access via the telephone is still among most preferred channels for people that seek assistance. In our white paper, we show why the phone is the most preferred channel compared to:

• E-mail

• Live Chat

• Online Knowledge

• “Click to Call” Support

Further, as medical call centers continue to adopt other channels (and thus the evolution of the “medical contact center” term), they are also arguably becoming more capable of satisfying patients and increasing value for hospitals.

Call Centers Improve Patient Satisfaction

However, simply having a phone number for patients to call is not enough to provide satisfactory customer service. On the contrary, telephone communications that are perceived as slow or rely too heavily upon automation can yield negative feelings about a brand. Three-quarters of people that call customer service lines feel it takes too long to reach agents, and more than two-thirds will hang up (“abandonment”) if they cannot access a real person. In that context, providing real, reliable and personalized customer service representatives on the phone can significantly impact perceptions of a “happy customer experience in two ways,” which we explain in our white paper:

• Competent Service Rep

• Personalization

Thus, medical call centers that can provide swift, accurate and personal attention to patients may not only help reduce call abandonment rates, but may also result in better brand perceptions and referrals.

Call Centers Improve Patient Management and Follow-up Efficacy

The expansion of alternative payment models (e.g., value-based care, bundled payments) demands hospitals to continue to prioritize followups with patients to ensure satisfactory outcomes. Medical call centers that offer outbound calling and support services, such as nurse triage, are perfectly positioned to achieve advanced follow-up objectives, especially since outbound calling is the most common type of outbound call. Our white papers illustrates the rates for which medical call centers are used for:

• Post-Discharge Follow-up

• Appointment Reminders

• Pre-Appointment Admissions

• Patient Satisfaction

• Patient/Care Navigation

Call Centers Deepen Hospital Brand Awareness and Physician Referrals

As mentioned earlier, hospitals are unique in that its patients are not “customers” in the traditional sense of retail or commercial businesses, especially with respect to not grooming them to become “repeat customers.” However, some marketing fundamentals are universal, which includes positive word-of-mouth referrals—and why (as mentioned in our white paper) nearly three-quarters of patients have said they would recommend their hospital to friends and family.

Call Centers Have High Potential for Optimal Return on Investment (ROI)

Continuing on the theme of how medical call centers can expand brand awareness and referrals, they consequently are also thought to have a high potential for optimal return on investment (ROI). Our white paper shows how their estimated 3:1 ROI ratio has been attributed their proven ability to build brand loyalty.
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Guideway Care has been a leading healthcare call center provider for more than a decade. 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.