Contact Center For a Healthcare Industry: Importance and Benefits

Contact centers are the backbone of any patient engagement and outreach strategy. Therefore, they are also a vital part of the health healthcare industry.

Call centers are the patient’s primary platform of communication. They are essential for multiple healthcare establishments. 

Through call centers, answering queries, solving problems, and scheduling appointments can be managed appropriately. So, it is the agent’s duty to guarantee that the patient interaction is positive.

To achieve patient satisfaction, there is a strong need for effective communication. Patient satisfaction at every stage of his medical journey is necessary. It has to be achieved through an efficient healthcare call center.

Technology and compliance keep emerging. But in the healthcare industry,  the need to deliver high-quality and patient-centered care.

Whenever patients call their physician’s office, they expect a quick response. And people hate being delayed or if put on hold.

Healthcare call centers can promptly answer the patients. They lessen the load on the administrative team. Additionally, call centers also help in improving the patient experience.

What Is a Contact Center For The Modern Healthcare Industry?

Just like retail call centers, there are also contact centers for the modern healthcare industry.  These call centers focus on patients’ experience with healthcare providers. These call centers provide inbound and outbound communications between patients and healthcare providers.

The healthcare call center handles appointments. It also provides patients with information about sicknesses and healthcare supplies. 

Healthcare contact centers are very distinctive from traditional retailer contact centers. They usually try to answer as many calls as possible in the shortest amount of time. 

On the other hand, healthcare call centers are more concerned with patient engagement. They focus on crucial touchpoints that define the patient experience with a provider. 

Main Features of a Healthcare Contact Center

There are many best practices for healthcare call centers. These practices make the call centers worthy and reliable. 

Below some of the noticeable features of the contact center have been highlighted.

Omnichannel support 

There are many platforms available to clients. The challenge is to support them on all the channels as they request. Medical call centers offer omnichannel support on all leading platforms. 

It helps to connect with patients. Different means like emails, social media, websites, and calls are used for communication.

Industry compliance

Healthcare is the most sensitive sector. There is zero percent tolerance for the risks. Therefore, health insurance call centers have to be compliant with certain industry standards. It is imperative to ensure that no patient data is at any risk. All potential dangers must be mitigated before time. 

The rules and regulations are rapidly changing and updating. So it might become difficult to stay concurrent with the latest regulations. However, the right healthcare call centers always got you covered. As they effortlessly handle the complex rules of HIPAA, PCI, TCPA, CFPB, TSR, ANI, ACMA, Ofcom, GDPR, and more in order to stay compliant. 

Security compliance 

The healthcare industry should adhere to the regulations. Having a non-compliant call center can threaten your healthcare center. It can ruin your reputation. It may even lead to legal problems or fines.

Your contact center provider needs to strictly follow the protocols, standards, and policies outlined in HIPAA. Moreover, it needs to have security standards in place proven by certifications. For instance, we at Simply Contact are ISO 27001 compliant which proves our team adheres to information security management standards. In case you will require your contact center agents to handle patients' financial information, you need PCI DSS certification - and we at Simply Contact also have it in place.

It is important to ensure that each verified name and social security number is secured. Address, provider’s name, code, and other PHI data are handled confidentially. The recorded calls, appointments, reminder SMS, and forwarded emails must be all well-protected.

Vital HIPPA Regulations:

• Disaster recovery plan
• Data encryption
• Limited access to patient’s data
• Recording calls and supervisor monitoring

A responsible healthcare call center must train its Privacy Security Compliance Officer (PSCO). The officer must be trained with HIPAA privacy and security procedures and policies.  

Advanced analytics

To improve is mandatory. Staying stagnant is lethal. A deeper insight by analytics helps you to upgrade strategically. You can measure the patient’s experience by analyzing their data. It will also explicitly shed light on your flaws and the areas you need to improve in. 

These analytics help you to analyze your agents’ performance and manage it accordingly. The developed contact centers use six main metrics for InBound Service. Those metrics are:

• Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI)
• Service Level (SL)
• First Contact Resolution (FCR
• Average Handling Time (AHT)
• Utilization
• Requests per Hour 

Call centers also have a strong approach to analytics. This approach helps to measure the performance of each of their agents hourly. This helps to introduce workflow improvements in time. It ensures that their services are always quality-driven.

Multilingual support 

Healthcare customer service operators should support multiple languages. The language barrier can create many hurdles for customers. 

Therefore, Simply Contact also provides customer support in more than 18 languages. So, all the customers, regardless of their languages, location, or culture, get full exposure to healthcare services. 

This multilingual support increases the accessibility for people around the globe. It also increases the liability and trust of patients in the healthcare organization.

What Tasks Contact Center Help To Solve For Healthcare Companies?

Medical call centers are highly developed. The agents are aware of all services of a healthcare organization. This makes them confident enough to deal with any issue. The call center agents can call and communicate with any patient. Calls are handled carefully to provide a smooth experience to patients.

The contact center is the basic platform. The information about physicians' referrals, services, and doctor’s offices are collected from here.

Booking appointment

The first step a healthcare call center takes is setting a doctor’s appointment. Patients expect to make an appointment before visiting the facility. A medical call center can automate this process. This way, the respective physician also gets updated.  This way, the entire system remains managed and smooth.

Insurance claim

For the most pressing patient demands, today’s advanced healthcare insurance call centers offer health insurance. With their expertise in insurance services, they help patients in claiming insurance.

Emergency call

Healthcare call centers use innovative technologies. These technologies assist patients in hospital emergency departments. Improved emergency department metrics provide patients with better services.

Ambulatory services

Ambulatory services include basic medical care. The ambulatory services work fast and efficiently with healthcare call centers.

Blood drives

Managed data from blood drives can keep the system hassle-free. This way, prior measurements can be taken to deal with emergencies.

Collecting reports

Getting pathology reports or medical tests can become an ordeal at any time. Thus, healthcare call centers prevent your effort. It can timely inform you to pick up your reports.

Medical answering aervices

To resolve the patients’ queries, healthcare contact centers provide compliant medical answering services. To prevent the customers from inconvenience, detailed and prompt answers should be ensured. 

Our Summary 

Many healthcare call centers are still beginning and struggling to grow. They are attempting to implement new technologies to meet the demand of the present time. But patient care and satisfaction, along with all the protocols, are to be strictly followed. It cannot be compromised with any inexperienced hands of newly established companies.

Simply Contact ensures consistency in a positive patient experience. Its efficient management system helps to meet all the challenges. It increases the productivity and service levels of your healthcare organization.

So if you are wondering about choosing the right medical call center, contact us to get an expert consultation or a project estimate.