Building a robust but streamlined call center operation can boost patient satisfaction, loyalty

"Having an excellent contact center experience where people have reliable consistent and easy to access service sets the tone for patient's whole perspective on your organization."

And that's good or bad, says Lynne Hildreth, director of patient access for Moffitt Cancer Center. Call centers are, in theory, built for fast, flexible responses to consumer needs. The center streamlines interactions while mining them for rich data to improve consumer engagement. Hildreth will share more on how to join systems like Moffitt in leading the industry in patient engagement and satisfaction aided by an efficient call center operation next week at HIMSS19.

Moffitt started with the scheduling aspect of contact centers and have continued to add on functions like financial clearance and bill servicing. For added convenience, they are staffed such that the same team can handle all types of bills so patients don't have to contact different people. Largely, the focus has been on first-call resolution to scheduling and in the past they had under 10 percent first call resolution for patients who got an appointment the first time they called, Hildreth said.

Now they are between 70 and 90 percent depending on the services for first call resolution and that means a lot, Hildreth said, since when patients are waiting for you to call them back they are calling other providers too.

"We didn't know what was walking out the door before but now we have a better sense of who we are capturing in getting them appointments as soon as they called."

Hildreth will offer more insights at HIMSS19 in a session titled "Evolution of the Healthcare Consumer Contact Center." It's scheduled for Tuesday, February 12, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in room W303A.