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Healthcare and PowerHouse have a very long and rich history. We have been privileged to work with some of the best healthcare systems in the country as they address the new and emerging needs of the 21st century patient experience. Access centers were the focus of our consultancy work; after all, they are first of all contact centers. The history of the access centers provides a context of where they are today. They show incredible courage to respond to and manage the COVID-19 disruption. It is through the Access Center that healthcare organizations can face a future they did not see coming.
Origins of the access center
Access centers have sprung up in the last 20 years due to many factors; the most convincing is the consolidation of health systems. Most of us have first-hand experience with this phenomenon, as our doctors are now “owned” by a hospital, university, or group of investors. Hospitals and practices have been acquired at a very rapid pace, placing new organizational and operational demands on healthcare institutions.
This consolidation was driven by both consumer demand and economic gains. Consumers of the private practice health care model were subject to conditions that were considered unacceptable to the 21st century consumer. Growth within the private practice model has outpaced internal practice operations; Practices were often understaffed to meet demand at all levels.
Clinics were often too understaffed to answer the phone, used voicemail for coverage during the day, and often forgot to answer calls in a timely fashion. Individual practices have booked appointments weeks, if not months, out. Many appointments have led to “no shows”, resulting in a loss in supplier productivity and revenue. Additionally, practices often close for lunch, afternoons, or meetings. These conditions blocked access and delayed patient response, frustrating or losing patients altogether.
Access centers began gaining momentum as systems began hearing patient complaints about access and a patient’s inability to contact a practice by phone or book an appointment in a reasonable amount of time. Doctors’ offices have informed us on more than one occasion that patients would go to the consultation to book an appointment because they could not communicate by phone. The most surprising fact about this story is that it was told almost with a feeling of pride: “Look how much our patients love us; tolerate this unacceptable behavior! “Once a healthcare system took over the practice, the complaints reached a new audience of executives who cared not just about the patient experience, but about the impact on their income.
Therefore, the Access Centers have emerged as the solution to these problems..
The solution of the system was to centralize the scheduling of appointments. Access centers have simplified the transfer of call answering and appointment scheduling to a centralized contact center operation. The Access Center strategy was to allow practice staff to focus more on the clinical experience … by managing patient needs in real time and day-to-day practical operations.
Today, many access centers have gone beyond centralizing planning to provide a “virtual office” service by routing all practical calls to the access center where protocols are followed to manage the various interactions. Access centers remain open continuously to serve patients and potential customers; some even offer extended hours. Access centers are best placed to manage multiple channels, programs, locations and providers within the same operation.
Common challenges today
The challenges faced by access centers today range from managing growth to achieving efficiencies to an ongoing identity crisis, such as contact centers in other industries. Access centers have to repeatedly “prove” that centralization is successful for those who are dissatisfied with the model. Removing office appointment scheduling to a centralized model has been traumatic for some. Many doctors feel like they are losing “control” and the office staff felt they were losing “status” as custodian of the doctor’s program.
Among the biggest challenges is the documentation and implementation of medical “protocols”… who will see the doctor, what age, what conditions, in what places and for what time. Some protocols are strict, for example, “I only see 35-year-old left-handed men on Tuesdays when it rains.” (Ha ha!) It sounds silly, but in truth, some protocols have been written to make centralization more challenging; create conditions that require the call to be “transferred to office” for scheduling. Therefore, the Access Center does all the initial work and the patient is subject to a transfer rather than a “one time” experience. This is especially striking when a patient can book an appointment on the organization’s website with little more than insurance verification.
Unfortunately, executive governance over medical protocols is very mixed.
The best access centers have guidelines. For example, there must be a clinically motivated reason to return to the office. The system can also establish a limited number of appointment types or request the availability of additional spaces for new patients. This potentially reduces the number of patients who are further displaced, as opportunities are most likely missed.
“In the midst of difficulties lies the opportunity” – Albert Einstein
The organizational and operational focus of the Access Center (as in any contact center) determines the effectiveness of this business unit and the type of culture that will emerge. The problem with access centers is that they are in a very complex environment. If you’ve ever seen the interface of an electronic health record (EMR) system, it makes airlines simple. Even landing an aircraft based on an aircraft carrier could be less complicated!
Given the nature of health care, the Access Center workforce must carry strong critical thinking and relationship / communication skills. Callers are generally faced with an undesirable situation, so empathy and compassion are requirements. The organization must treat frontline resources as the professionals we want them to be or become.
The outdated, militaristic, factory-like, manufacturing-based approach to call center management of the 20th century will not have the kind of talent needed for success in today’s complex business environment. Indeed, the old model often generates a culture of conformity and mediocrity rather than a culture of discovery, development and excellence. Operational refinement is required. Almost everything we do should focus on the front.
Needs of the future
Everything I’m saying here is true for all contact centers, not just healthcare operations. Regardless of the industry, the future of customer service lies in handling more complex issues and problems than can be handled with “self-service” options. The “cognitive load” of the contact center will increase; Qualified frontline agents will ask to work in environments that nurture and develop their talents and skills.
You have to create a culture based on learning by strong and intelligent entrepreneurs who are treated and selected in a way that optimizes, not minimizes, their talent. The organizational model must support and not distract from the mission. If the Access Center is understaffed, understaffed, or understaffed, a brain drain is very likely.
There are four characteristics of a strong organizational model that many Access Centers actually follow.
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Training and job support:
A massive and ongoing investment is made in training, job grants, tools and an online knowledge base that supports frontline agents. A learner-based training program focuses on what agents need to know, do and feel. Transactional systems are taught in the context of work. The goal is to help students be independent, empowered and efficient.
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Quality management:
I define a quality program as a quality “training” program rather than a compliance audit. Like training, a quality program should be learner-centered, conversation-based and personal development oriented. The supervisor acts as a coach, with a ratio of no more than 1 supervisor for every 15 agents (12 is even better) and an expectation of 25% to 30% of the supervisor’s time allotted for training. Each supervisor has a team leader to ensure that training time is not wasted on other activities.
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The organizational model:
This includes a quality manager to oversee the quality program itself, define its objectives and behavioral elements, and train the coaches. Additionally, a quality analyst tracks trends and works with these support teams: WFM for training / coaching time, operations for process issues, and training to reverse negative trends. The goal is to document problems, identify solutions, and ultimately celebrate successes.
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Workforce Management (WFM):
WFM is a strategic partner and recommendations for staff are funded and followed up. The access centers of the future (and some of today) will be identified as revenue drivers and act accordingly when addressing investment in people, processes or technology.
Access center as a center of value
Due to COVID-19, a lot has changed in healthcare. The access centers have certainly proved their worth during this pandemic. Take, for example, Penn Medicine’s Access Center in Philadelphia. In addition to successfully transferring 300 or more agents to a work-from-home model, Penn Medicine’s Access Center has also been able to respond to massive changes.
In the days leading up to COVID, anyone who needed medical attention for a lab test (blood, etc.) didn’t need an appointment.
It was a “walk-in world”. Well, not anymore! When Penn Labs opened to meet safety and social distancing requirements, Labs now had to book appointments and were struggling a lot. Enter the Access Center. According to Danielle Werner, director of operations at Penn Medicine, “We had the opportunity to leverage our Access Center centralization model to assist in the conversion of our laboratory from a walk-in to an appointment-based operation. increasing scheduled appointments by nearly 500 percent. ”Prior to the Access Center cross-training, labs scheduled approximately 1,100 appointments per week. When the Access Center took over, it scheduled nearly 5,000.
Penn Medicine’s story has echoed across the healthcare industry footprint. Access centers have a bright future to work on, even if it won’t always be an easy or clear path. However, the journey is full of learning and opportunities!
Source: www.contactcenterpipeline.com
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