Johns Hopkins Medicine reduced its call volume by 3% and its operating costs by $1.4 million using a contact center solution from Avaya, giving staff more time to assist patients with complex needs.
Adding Value to the Patient Experience
U.S. healthcare providers have increasingly prioritized the patient experience in recent years, according to Philip Bradley, digital health strategist at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
“We probably should have focused more on the patient experience all along,” he says. “Organizations have had initiatives move in this direction, but the technology hasn’t always supported it. In the past, the electronic health records focus was more about automating the medical record, capturing nurse and physician documentation and handling billing, and we did that fairly well. Now, the shift is toward meeting the expectations of patients and their families, not just while in front of a clinician but also at home.”
Contact center technology, Bradley adds, is just one of the tools healthcare providers need to improve the patient experience. Ambient listening technology, he says, lets physicians keep their focus on patients during visits, instead of on typing up notes. It all adds up to helping patients feel more valued and making providers’ jobs better.
“It’s a cultural shift,” Bradley says. “We aren’t seeing it as a productivity gain. That technology isn’t letting a doctor see one additional patient, but it does get them home at the end of the day because their notes are finished. They review them, they sign off, and they’re done. It’s a tremendous opportunity.”
As more patients receive care or recover at home, health systems need to ensure that these patients can get their questions answered quickly and easily.
“Let’s say a patient is in the hospital for congestive heart failure, and they’re sent home with a Bluetooth scale,” he says. “What if they have a question about how to use it? If the patient has a bad experience when they call in, they’re going to post about it on social media and rake you over the coals. We have to be very careful as more devices are going home with these patients about how we answer those calls and provide ongoing patient service.”
DISCOVER: Healthcare organizations need a customer experience that blends AI and the human touch.
What’s Next for Healthcare Contact Centers
Although many industries are using AI to improve customer service, healthcare has been slower to adopt the technology due to data silos, privacy concerns and cost.
“You need to have clean data to be able to do it, so that’s a bit of a holdback,” says Scott Merritt, patient experience architect at CDW. “Also, healthcare organizations are concerned about security and costs. They often want to be a bit behind the bleeding edge.”
Springfield Clinic has begun experimenting with AI-powered call transcription and summary, and Fuchs says he is looking forward to rolling out the capability across the organization.
“That’s going to be a huge win for our team,” he says. “Our people can then focus more on being empathetic and solving problems with the patient instead of note-taking. They get a summary at the end of the call, and they can just put it right into the electronic health record.”
