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Medical practices receive hundreds if not thousands of calls every week from patients, payers, pharmacies, and others. Outsourcing call centers can be a smart move to improve efficiency, lower costs, improve customer care, ensure proper payer management, and ensure regulatory compliance. This article discusses how to know when it's time to move to an outsourced call center, the benefits of making the move, how to choose the right call center, and how to make the transition. It also provides tips on how to manage the call center to ensure the objectives are being met.
KEY WORDS: Outsource call center; call recording; regulatory compliance; medical practice.
Medical practices receive hundreds if not thousands of calls every week from patients, payers, pharmacies, and others. While internal call centers can be a valuable resource, managing incoming calls while also trying to provide the best patient care possible can be a drain on medical practices. For smaller practices, keeping up with incoming calls can become a juggling act for front-desk or back-office staff. For larger and growing medical practices, housing their own internal call centers can become very impractical. Outsourcing call centers can be a smart move to improve efficiency, lower costs, improve customer care, ensure proper payer management, and ensure regulatory compliance.
Outsourcing your call center delivers considerable advantages and can help you achieve your long-term goals. It is important to know what to look for in choosing the right vendor: understanding the services; ensuring compliance with HIPAA, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and other regulatory compliance issues; and, most importantly, ensuring appropriate customer care and payer management.
HOW TO KNOW WHEN TO OUTSOURCE YOUR CALL CENTER
If you are using call center management software, it can be easy to assess the performance of your call center to see how many calls are going through the system and to which groups and agents. Running a quick report can tell you how quickly calls are being answered, average hold times, and the percentage of abandoned calls, all of which may indicate that it is time for help. If your practice is not using call center management software or if you do not have a call center, your staff members can easily tell you if they...