Call Center Operations

When a patient or referring provider contacts the practice, they expect to receive a consistent and standard experience; however, as various personnel through the practice answer calls, it is difficult to ensure a standard experience each time. A call center offers the opportunity to consolidate operations so that one group of focused and dedicated personnel handle the customer with a consistent approach and experience intentionally designed by the providers and practice leaders. If the transition to a call center is well planned out with intentionally designed processes, the Access Center structure offers advantages that are unable to achieve without it.

Our team brings innovative methodologies, proven by partnerships with the nation’s top medical centers, to develop a comprehensive Access Center for your organization. We work with you to understand your organization’s current state and optimal state objective to develop a tailored Access Center approach. We utilize our extensive Patient Access Playbook toolkit to deliver best practice solutions. The following are a few examples of key activities and deliverables related to contact center consolidation:

1. Scheduling protocols that translate provider scheduling rules into simplified tools for the scheduler.
2. Consolidation project plan with key activities, accountable parties, and expected timeline for a seamless transition.
3. Manage the scope of the project and assure stakeholder expectations are aligned.
4. Coordinate people and resources dedicated to the project and defined in the project plan.
5. Implement methodologies to ensure Access Center and provider cohesion toward a common experience
6. Calibration techniques across leaders to assure consistent quality monitoring results.

A consolidated contact center is not the optimal solution for all organizations. We will work with you to determine the ROI of consolidation vs. optimizing the current structure’s performance.

Contact centers are under constant pressure to improve the customers’ experience while reducing costs. This Engagement is designed to quickly assess and deliver your organization a quantifiable return on investment (ROI) by focusing on both short term impact opportunities while laying the foundation for future enhancement opportunities.

These targeted engagements are structured to offer an objective and independent assessment of current operations with key recommended strategies at an affordable price. Our evaluation covers activities related to the contact center processes, procedures, staffing skill sets, provider protocols, provider template build, and technology. Prior to arriving on-site, Access Advisors will discuss perceptions and current state operations with key stakeholders, analyze data, conduct an independent survey of staff, and review relevant reports. This pre-engagement workup enables us to rapidly and cost effectively target opportunities during a three day on-site assessment. We will then synthesize all the findings into a customized report to include a Best Practice Gap Analysis along with quantifiable recommendations that will often pay for themselves in just a few months.

Access Informatics is a unique solution that allows clients to benefit from our expertise on an ongoing basis without the expense of regular travel. Frequently, healthcare contact centers do not have the budget to hire Workforce Analysts, Reporting Analysts, or Quality Analysts. These positions are vital to the success of an Access Center. They provide support services that assure accurate forecasting, engaged intra-day management, effective performance management, supervisor and lead accountability, and engaged quality management. Access Advisors developed a system where we can provide these services remotely at a reduced cost. Outsourcing your performance and quality management oversight to an unbiased and expert third party can help reduce your budget and increase your performance. For more information related to this service, please checkout Access Informatics

Access Advisors delivers a variety of training programs to enhance the knowledge and effectiveness of your staff and their leaders. Our experienced trainers bring a combination of hands-on expertise, training know-how and outstanding presentation skills to every engagement. Our standard inter-active workshops or customized presentations are stimulating, effective and realize actionable results. For more information on our training programs, go to Access Academy.

Access Advisors delivers a variety of training programs to enhance the knowledge and effectiveness of your staff and their leaders. Our experienced trainers bring a combination of hands-on expertise, training know-how and outstanding presentation skills to every engagement. Our standard inter-active workshops or customized presentations are stimulating, effective and realize actionable results.

Determining how to staff your contact center is one of the most essential steps in optimization. The Patient Access Playbook ™ allows Access Advisors’ experts to ensure every piece of your staffing puzzle is in place. Analyzing your current situation and determining the proper amount of employees for your workload is often the first step. We help you establish the proper employee qualifications and examine whether your best candidates are internal, external, or a blend of both. The Playbook includes agent, management, and executive levels of organizational structure to ensure all levels of the contact center are built to support success.

The lack of workforce management is a common theme in healthcare call center operations. Do you know what your call forecast by 15 minute interval is for the next 90 days? Do you know how many agents are off the phones at 11:30 on a Monday? How many agents should be on the phone during this time? How much time are your employees spending putting together patient packets? Is the non-phone work affecting the Service Levels? These are some questions that workforce management tackles. Access Advisors uses the most current methodologies to track volume trends, forecast future volume, determine agent staffing needs, and understand agent’s work patterns. The quality of workforce management in your organization has a direct impact on Service Levels and patient satisfaction. Our proven methods have helped to increase agent productivity, optimize agent schedules to improve performance without additional FTE, decrease call volume due to declining repeat volume, and much more. Contact Access Advisors today to see how we can help you optimize your contact center.