Contact centers are sometimes the afterthought of the healthcare provider ecosystem. They are often perceived as not offering much value and that the agents are just call takers that do little to contribute to the provider’s business.
But the reality is that contact centers should be recognized front and center within a healthcare organization. Contact centers provide the connective tissue that links patients, providers, physicians, nurses, and all the other relevant contributors along the continuum of care.
Patients consistently rely on a provider’s contact center agents to help them navigate and facilitate their healthcare. Yet many providers are not realizing their contact center’s full potential. Let’s dive into what providers can be doing to take their contact center’s clinical and operational capabilities to the next level.
Let’s start with the basics. How would you define a contact center? It’s a simple question but interpretive to many meanings.
Some providers have a large contact center full of multiple agents, while others may have a single person that only does the scheduling. Some have a hub-and-spoke model, and some don’t have a contact center at all, instead using multiple entry points that are each handled by administrative staff
The contact center is an incredibly vital part of the patient journey, and the majority of the time, it is the gateway to episodic care.
Think of all the reasons that a patient may need to access a contact center, and you’ll start to see a pattern of the center’s importance in the provider setting. These are just some of the ways:
Salesforce Health Cloud and Service Cloud provide visibility for contact center agents to see a clear longitudinal history of each patient, from present state to future state, through the integration of electronic health records (EHR). Health Cloud is the foundational Salesforce platform for contact center operations. Depending on the specific capabilities or responsibilities, the contact center can also use Service Cloud or leverage a combination of the two.
One of the fundamental flaws with most healthcare systems is they have a predetermined idea of what a contact center is and the role it should traditionally play in healthcare. Providers must think of their contact centers in a more consumer-centric manner. It starts with a clear understanding of the contact center’s capabilities across all areas of care and how that aligns with the patients’ needs.
In many cases, the contact center is like a live switchboard that is just going through the motions rather than being used to accelerate operations. A contact center can also be a center for risk mitigation, patient experience, referral management, and many other use cases that can efficiently be run through its operations. And by pivoting to a more robust contact center, providers can see reductions in costs and bandwidth constraints that ultimately lead to improvements in the system’s clinical, financial, and experience outcomes.
The key is to utilize the Salesforce platform to create a more customized feel for each contact center interaction. Salesforce captures demographic and preference data that the agent can leverage to make the patient feel less like a medical record number and more like an actual person. Salesforce lets the agent greet the patient by a nickname they may want to be called or use their location and times to direct when they wish to be contacted.
One of the most significant ways that a provider’s contact center drives the delivery of care is by closing care gaps. These gaps refer to when a patient is not getting the care they need or were prescribed. The gap could be for a variety of reasons, such as missing an annual health screening or not taking the correct medication dosage.
Contact centers can use personalized patient outreach to minimize care gaps. This could include rescheduling appointments or arranging a referral. Closing care gaps is especially important for proactive preventative care and improved clinical outcomes. Both the patient and provider benefit from maintaining healthcare needs rather than responding reactively to them.
The contact center is also essential in ensuring those gaps are truly closed. Agents move the needle from pending to completed by gently nudging the patient along the journey, both from an experience and a clinical perspective. Contact centers ensure that pre-visit instructions have been followed and that the patient actually shows up at the point-of-service visit without canceling or rescheduling.
Salesforce helps with proactive care, such as a mother calling to schedule her primary care visit and the ability of the agent to notice that one of her children is due for a booster. The agent can then schedule both appointments simultaneously and save the mother the time and effort to call again – thus closing the care gaps.
Think of your contact center as an extension of every department in your system that can help lighten the load. By letting your contact center take over handling your call volume, you can free up your clinic staff to focus on the patients that are physically at your point-of-service.
Some providers may have reservations that their contact center agents don’t reside physically inside their clinic walls. Physicians could be reluctant to have contact center agents handle their patients because they don’t know the physicians, office, protocols, or preferences.
But a contact center can expertly step in when clinic staff is unavailable. Most contact centers have hours beyond a clinic’s hours of operation or have a 24/7 model. This gives the contact center the advantage of having a higher probability of connecting with patients during off-hours or when it is most convenient for them.
The staffing model inside a contact center can also deliver virtual care similar to the very one operating during clinic or hospital hours. For example, a nurse at a contact center can virtually advise how to care for a wound and have the patient avoid an unnecessary trip to the ER. Ask around to your clinical staff nurses, and you may be surprised by how many are burnt out providing point-of-service care delivery and would welcome the opportunity to become a contact center agent delivering virtual care.
Strengthen your patient relationships with Salesforce Health and Service Clouds by combining all your relevant patient data from different systems into a single 360-degree view. Contact centers can drive better outcomes by connecting EHR data, treatment plans, and patient preferences, ensuring agents connect patients to the right care faster.
With specialization in provider legacy systems and cutting-edge technologies, Silverline can help you create a contact center that goes far beyond the switchboard. Our experts have real-world experience in the healthcare industry, and can optimize your existing Salesforce implementation or help you ramp up new ones with a dedicated point of contact. Find out how we can enhance your contact center.
The original version of this page was published at: https://silverlinecrm.com/blog/healthcare/maximizing-your-contact-centers-clinical-and-operational-capabilities/
With real-world expertise in the Healthcare industry, including sub-segments such as Provider, Payer, Medical Device, and Life Sciences, Silverline helps clients realize continuous value on the Sal... Read more
