Over 90% of all customer interactions tend to happen over the telephone. But nearly 88% of customers are dissatisfied with their experiences over the phone. For example, whenever a patient calls her healthcare provider’s office, the last thing she would want to talk to is a busy receptionist on the other end of the call. Or, even worse, be stuck in a queue. Being kept on call hold for a long time is a major reason for patient dissatisfaction.
Why should a healthcare provider consider outsourcing healthcare services to call centers in the USA?
What initially comes to mind when picturizing a healthcare industry? Perhaps healthcare workers are meandering around the hospital hallways, but there is a lot more to it than this. For example, the back-office people play a significant role in keeping the hospital up and running 24/7. As a matter of fact, they are critical to the hospital’s success. Since many healthcare providers don’t have enough resources to hire and retain staff, many have chosen to outsource.
In 2023, the healthcare outsourcing market is expected to reach approximately $500 billion at an approximate 13% compounded annual growth. What does this denote? It means that there will be an increasing need to minimize or eliminate critical mistakes, lower operational costs, and deliver better services. These three factors will help in driving market growth, and healthcare call center agents are behind these central drivers of healthcare growth.
In the present scenario, outsourcing companies handle a variety of activities ranging from medical claims to data entry processing to medical billing. Below is a list of reasons addressing specific pain points as to why healthcare organizations should consider outsourcing to call centers in the USA.
Focus on patient care and medical research:
All the secondary healthcare duties like data entry, billing, inventory management, and insurance claims processing are pretty tedious and time-consuming tasks to manage. It also overburdens the healthcare staff for no reason. Outsourcing these tasks to a BPO firm reduces the overall burden on the healthcare staff, and this allows them to focus more on the core activities like research and medical treatment. Handing over the secondary duties to outsourcing companies can improve the physician-patient relationship.
Cost-effectiveness:
It does not seem to be a major reason for healthcare providers to outsource, but it could be proven to be a game-changer for clinics and hospitals trying to move their expenses to focus solely on patient care and hospital operations. Call centers in the USA can help reduce operational expenses so that healthcare institutions will not require hiring and training in-house staff to execute the daily mundane chores. These extra savings can enhance the existing healthcare functions.
Quality Patient Care:
The hospital’s savings by outsourcing medical billing and medical coding services are utilized in other hospitals’ development tasks. This can help in providing quality care to the patients and expand existing resources. As a result, even the staff also becomes less burdened. So, they can invest more time and energy in taking care of the patients, especially in a pandemic crisis; every minute saved is critical for the ailing patients.
Avoid Costly Mistakes:
Every minute detail holds great value in the healthcare industry. Hospitals and clinics require to maintain patient records, customer privacy, and other medical information. On top of that, healthcare providers have to process medical insurance claims and navigate through the procedures of each insurance provider. In addition to taking care of patients, these activities usually overburden the in-house staff, which increases the chances of human error. The right healthcare call center in the USA can seamlessly take the tasks like billing and processing medical claims from hospitals.
Access to Experts-
Choosing to partner with the appropriate BPO firm can add additional value to the healthcare institution as outsourcing will help the hospitals gain access to professionals in the industry who are highly trained to handle the tasks of medical transcriptions and data processing.
Proactive Appointment and Engagements–
Healthcare providers can improve the gap between them and their customers/patients by providing the required information even before they ask for it. This means that healthcare channels can connect with their patients through multiple channels like emails, SMS, and voice calls. Call center agents to act proactively to reach patients to keep them updated on their healthcare requirements.
With the help of these communication channels, hospitals can notify their patients about their scheduled or canceled appointment details and file deadlines and offer any additional information. In addition, healthcare providers can anticipate the next step in progress. They can help in adding valuable content and guide the customers to connect with an agent who will help them with their queries.
IT consolidation–
The global healthcare IT outsourcing market is projected to reach $61 billion by 2023. The most common area in the healthcare industry is IT administration when it comes to outsourcing to healthcare call centers in the USA. A major catalyst behind this is the electronic means to store health records, the high demand for e-billing systems, and cloud computing.
Error-free medical bills–
Healthcare providers have to deal with numerous medical records every day. And, unlike other industries, coding and billing can be quite complicated. Lack of knowledge and expertise can lead to expensive billing errors during the processing of patients’ bills. Outsourcing medical billing services to a healthcare call center in the USA provides the hospital access to an expert team of experts who are experts in dealing with all types of medical records, thus preventing any coding or billing hiccups.
What are the common healthcare call center services?
Healthcare call centers work with patients and clients to resolve problems and challenges in a hassle-free manner. Some of the common services are as follows –
Substantiating Insurance
If it is about verifying portfolios of patients, confirming eligibility, or pre-authorization. Healthcare call centers take care of all of this. These services make sure to alleviate financial risks for healthcare providers and patients.
Physician referral services
The outsourcing companies maintain a complete database of community physicians. And specialty doctors who can be easily get in touch through their physician referral services to get information on healthcare services.
Healthcare claim management
To ensure a clean claim rate, BPO companies implement automation in the claims management system. In addition, automating specific manual functions of claims management declutters the bottleneck in the provider institution’s revenue stream, thereby eliminating the risk of claims denial or short pay due to incorrect or partial claims documentation.
24/7 answering services
A healthcare company can have healthcare call center experts attend to their customers on a round-the-clock basis. Answering services help the hospital or healthcare providers to interact with their patients and resolve medical billing and invoice conflicts in no time.
Now, let’s delve into the features of a new-age healthcare call center in the USA:
Single Platform or Cloud-based-
The modern call centers providing healthcare customer service do not entertain hardware installation.
Omni-Channel Support-
Healthcare call centers communicate with patients via multiple channels like voice recording, email, chat, and text messages.
Integrated with the best-
The best call centers are online and integrated with CRMs, EHRs & medical billing. Also other technology, all formulated to exceed patient expectations.
On a par with the industry, standards-BPO companies are compliant with important laws and standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCIs.
Precision call routing-
A call center’s smart call routing system in healthcare answering services makes a quick transfer of calls to the agents.
Best-in-Class Analytics-
Modern call centers in the USA measure their patient experience with real-time data that they can then analyze and further improve on.
Here is matter of discussion what a healthcare call center is? And why healthcare providers need to outsource their services to them, their common services, and the features of a new-age healthcare center. What is yet to answer—is a simple question: What are the advantages of healthcare call centers?
Although there is no single reason why 70% of all US hospitals have a healthcare call center that their growing popularity is related to the many perks that lead to better experiences for their customers and value for healthcare firms. In short, healthcare call centers help in improving:
- Patient satisfaction over the phone
- Department satisfaction
- ROI
- Savings to the healthcare firm
In a Nutshell
When outsourced or maintained in-house, healthcare call centers in the USA help keep track of patient records that help the hospitals and the healthcare providers have better interaction with the patients. These track records help create a roadmap for the medical staff to understand the issues of the patients more appropriately. The BPO partner generates a data feed where they gather the info of every patient into a repository, thereby creating a singular access point for all the relevant data. This helps in resolving all the disputes between healthcare institutions and patients.
Last but not least, BPO companies enable businesses to build efficiency, negate global distances, save time and increase bottom lines. With the benefits of having call center services in the USA. if you are looking for cost-effective solutions that fit your budget, hiring a contact center in India is also an ideal choice to make.
