In this era, call centers are the backbone of the well-managed healthcare industry. Agree?So, do you ever think how a call center can be important in the fields of healthcare, medical, and insurance? Let us discuss it in detail if you don’t know. These days outsourcing medical call center services are pivotal. By utilizing a medical call center in the healthcare and insurance fields, you can keep your patients, clients, and other businesses’ interests closer. It is not restricted to communicating with patients in person. In addition, it also covers the most common first point of contact for most hospital visits: telephone conversation.
However, handling patient calls are also quite challenging, especially in the telehealth and telemedicine services, as their demands are ever-increasing.
Thus, if a hospital does not have a good medical call center, it may suffer from increased patient frustrations and higher call center personnel turnover. So, before diving deep, let me tell you what medical call center services are and how is it essential for hospitals and healthcare professionals.
What are medical call center services?
Call center services for the healthcare industry, or healthcare outsourcing services, are referred to as a business process or activity that is outsourced to a HIPAA-Compliant BPO and provides administrative support to medical institutions, staff, and organizations. You can frequently outsource different services, including coding, medical billing services, transcription, and other similar tasks.
It is safe to assume that healthcare institutions, from insurers to pharmaceutical companies, are not recognized for being customer-centric. Healthcare businesses require to provide better patient and customer experiences as demands for medical services grow. The present situation of healthcare emergencies, paired with an older population, needs a review of healthcare brands’ operating capacities.
Providing great customer support and utilizing digital-first touch points will be a big difference. Walking away from the negative emotions of concern and fear associated with diseases and introducing seamless patient-physician and customer interactions – transitioning from sick-care to proactive healthcare experiences – will be an important element of that.
Predicting and quickly resolving issues before they have an impact on the patient-customer has become the new industry standard. Customer service in healthcare went a long way. However, given its dearth of popularity, there is still space for betterment. This is where outsourcing medical call center services can help.
The major factors that call forth outsourcing in the healthcare industry are:
Medical Billing Error
Insurance firms demand correct medical billing, and even the minutest mistake on the insured person’s part can lead to the rejection of the claims by their healthcare provider companies. It has been discovered that 80% of billings have errors. This leads to a time-consuming process for the doctors to fix errors, resubmit claims, and wait for the new claim to be accepted and processed.
Claim Denials
Insurance companies rules are evolving because healthcare practices are losing money due to claim denials, ignored claims, and underpayment.
Failure In Adhering to Update
The continuously changing rules impart a direct effect on cash flow and profits. However, the updates administered with the Health Care Reform have improved the number of insured Americans by more than 30 million. Therefore, correct medical billing procedures are the need of the hour.
What is the importance of outsourcing Medical Call Center Services?
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. In addition, 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. Healthcare BPOs 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. These activities, in addition to taking care of patients, usually overburden the in-house staff, which increases the chances of human error. The right Healthcare BPO can seamlessly take the tasks like billing and processing of medical claims from the hospitals.
Access to Experts-
Choosing to partner with the appropriate BPO firm can add additional value to the healthcare institution as the outsourcing will help the hospitals gain access to the professionals in the industry who are highly trained to handle the tasks of medical transcriptions and data processing. By seeking expert service, healthcare organizations can save operational costs and minimize the burden of the extra tasks on medical errors.
Proactive Appointment and Engagements–
Healthcare providers can improve the gap between them and their customers/patients by providing them with 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. With the help of these communication channels, hospitals can notify their patients about their scheduled or canceled appointment details, files 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.
When do you need to outsource medical call center services?
The focus on important functions like patient care is the very first step in enhancing healthcare delivery. Moreover, strengthening its call center equivalent begins with admitting that it is not a hospital role. It’s a crucial aspect of the entire healthcare business, but with the correct people on the job, it can also stand independently.
One of the first flags that it’s time to let go of in-house call center activities is when patient satisfaction levels drop. Poor call center management has a huge impact on the CX, especially at the first encounter. It can affect a patient’s decision to stay in the hospital or look for a better healthcare provider.
A high turnover rate among the medical call center workforce is another symptom. Many staff is tempted to resign because there are more job opportunities for the role outside of the organization. Providing them a better income may work, but they will not stay if their job is dead-end. It would be less expensive to outsource this duty to a company that handles everything rather than going through the never-ending procedure of hiring new staff.
The Bottom Line
Medical call center services are the most important part of the medical field. They offer various leverages, not limited to the patients but to the healthcare staff. As a result, healthcare staff can focus on other important tasks that are crucial to the organization’s growth.
Before outsourcing your healthcare duties to a HIPAA-Compliant BPO, you should make sure that they are trustworthy. The main reason is that healthcare data contains very sensitive and important data. When you hire a professional and well-trained BPO customer service provider, you save the time and money you spend on training and hiring.
