In the world of modern technology, there are no jobs that cannot be fulfilled by machines and bots with excellence at par with human intelligence. However, there are some aspects that necessarily need the human element. Such jobs include providing healthcare call center services.
Most people are in a distressed state when contacting a healthcare facility. Dealing with bots is the last thing they’d want to do. Therefore, having a live person answer calls can make healthcare call center service much more effective and personal. Let us explain how human contact through healthcare call center companies is crucial through this blog!
Requirements at a Healthcare Call Center
According to a Joint Commission study cited by HIPAAJournal.com, 80% of serious errors in the medical address are because of miscommunication between caregivers while handing over patients. That is an overwhelmingly large percentage that reinforces the fact that healthcare call center services have to be on-point.
Most medical institutions trust healthcare call center outsourcing companies because they fulfil the statement above. These companies know that in order to offer the right treatments and services to patients, their call centers must be:
- Quick in understanding the problem.
- Precise in understanding the patient’s current condition.
- Thorough with the patients’ medical record understanding.
- Empathetic in helping the patients.
- Clear in their communication between the patient and the caregivers.
How a Live Person Can Improve Healthcare Call Center Services?
In the previous section, we learned about the things healthcare call center companies need to be careful about. From a logical perspective, it is not possible for bots to be able to provide all those services easily. Only a live person can handle such sensitive situations in a clear and compassionate manner.
Here are some other reasons why a live person answering calls in a healthcare call center makes services much more effective:
- Trained Communication Skills
One of the best things about having live people answer medical calls is they can be trained for it. Machines cannot possibly have the communication skills a human can have. A human can improvise and make their discretion while speaking on certain medical issues. However, a machine will not budge from its programmed route even if it does not relate to a patient’s query.
Patients getting someone with spectacular communication skills to talk to when they’re vulnerable can make or break their medical experience.
- Higher Empathy While Dealing with Patients
Machines can be effective with data handling and processing. However, they cannot understand emotional handling and processing. Most people call healthcare call centers when they are in a distressed state and need empathetic support. That is something only a live person can offer, not machines and bots.
Staff at healthcare call centers need to be empathetic, patient, and understanding. Only then can they help people in their hour of need. Moreover, empathetic support can also help patients feel safer about sharing their medical condition, history, and requirements if they are sensitive in nature.
- Quicker Understanding of Problems
When call centers employ bots and answering machines, how many times do people actually get the solutions they need without getting frustrated? The occurrences are far too low to be mentioned. However, that is not a risk one can take while contacting a healthcare call center. People need suggestions and solutions, and they need them quickly.
When a live person answers medical calls, they can walk the patient through the process much more quickly. Moreover, the onus of understanding the urgency of the situation doesn’t fall on the patient but on the person in the call center. That is something that might not seem like much but can practically save lives.
- Better Consultations
Sure, machines can be trained to consult one healthcare provider when certain criteria are matched. However, it is only a live person who can read between the lines and understand what exactly other humans need when they are going through a medical issue.
Therefore, a live person in call centers can offer better consultations and suggest the right doctors on factors such as:
- Patient’s need
- Budget
- Urgency
- Caregivers’ rating
- Caregivers’ experience
- Caregivers’ work timings
- Proactive Patient Engagement
As a medical institution owner wanting to increase patient engagement, you cannot go wrong with call centers that have live people to answer the calls.
Patients will always trust a human better than machines. Moreover, through the communication skills imparted to call center employees, they are sure to be much more engaging than machines. It is easier for live people to build the kind of human connection that will help patients feel more comfortable, heard, and engaged with your institution, caregivers, and the services they receive.
What Services Can Healthcare Call Center Outsourcing Companies Offer?
Here are the services healthcare call center outsourcing companies can offer:
- 24/7 medical call answering services
- Patient and customer service
- Healthcare surveys
- Outreach and support for patients and their families
- Physician referrals
- Complain and grievance receiving and resolution
- Payroll management
- Claims processing
- Data entry
- IT administration
You can rest assured that communication will be well handled with these on and off-call services offered by healthcare call center companies Therefore, you can focus on core things such as hospital management and patient attendance.
Summing Up
A dash of human empathy and understanding can never be replaced by pre-recorded messages and machine learning. This is especially the case for businesses such as healthcare call center outsourcing companies. After all, a live person can be more empathetic and quick at solving human problems.
So, if you’re running a healthcare call center through bots, now you know better! Now is the time to quickly replace machines with humans!