The Basics Of Medical Insurance Verification Written by Jeff Tormey on March 29, 2023. Posted in Healthcare Companies. When it comes to running your healthcare organization, medical insurance verification is one of the most important aspects that you can optimize. That being said, there are a lot of questions surrounding what this entails and how best to go about it. For instance, should you outsource to a third party like Sequence Health or should you try to do it yourself? So in this blog post, let’s talk about what medical insurance verification is and why a healthcare call center could potentially be the right strategy for you. What Is Insurance Verification? When you check the status of a patient’s insurance coverage, that’s what’s typically considered insurance verification. You also see their eligibility for that service. You can confirm the following: – If a policy expires – If they’re in-network – If a procedure is covered with their benefits – How much of that procedure is covered? – If the patient has an active policy Insurance verification is incredibly important to perform before you render any services to a patient. After all, you have to understand how they’re going to handle it financially. Otherwise, they may be put in a difficult position to pay out of pocket or go into debt. How Does The Insurance Verification Process Work? There are two ways to go about the insurance verification process. You can try to do it in-house. This involves an incredible amount of overhead, time, and hassle. A much easier way to do this is to outsource to a third-party company like Sequence Health. We can provide insurance verification via our healthcare call center. We’ll call the patients on your behalf and verify all the information mentioned above. This makes it zero work for you to allow you to focus on serving patients at the highest level based on your core competencies. In the meantime, we’ll handle all of the verification eligibility requirements. What Must Be Verified Exactly When Verifying Insurance? Medical insurance needs to be verified by identifying the person is who they say they are. We also must ensure that their insurance is valid, and then we have to ensure that their claim can be covered. These are all standard parts of the process. Learn More About Medical Call Centers Today If you have any questions, from medical insurance verification checklists, to how it works, to how to outsource it, we can help. Reach out to the experts at Sequence Health today. Let’s ensure that you can improve patient outcomes and organizational efficiencies at the same time.
Creating A Call Center Disaster Recovery Plan Written by Jeff Tormey on March 21, 2023. Posted in Connect, Manage. When it comes to your healthcare call center, continuity is of the utmost importance. However, several call centers do not have the right business continuity plan in place for their operations. So in this article, let’s talk about a call center BCDR plan and why it’s so important. That way you can prepare your practice in the best way possible now and going forward. Read More: Tips To Improve Health Center Efficiency What is a Call Center Business Continuity Plan? A Business Continuity Plan has various steps to accommodate your budget changes, mobility restrictions, customer calls, and more if you have to go remote or shut down. Any such situation can adversely affect your call center without a BCP. In the end, you could fail to meet your obligations to your patients. On the other hand, a Business Continuity Plan allows you to continue your call center operations no matter what. Business continuity plan creates plans and systems for support and backup and recovery when you’re in critical situations. Documentation of a business continuity plan is a document that describes what will happen exactly if service is disrupted. It can cover data theft, bankruptcy, pandemic, response, infrastructure crashes, and more. There should be a checklist in a BCP as well. This refers to your backup supplies, equipment, and other must-haves during this scenario. What Must Be Included In Your Business Continuity Plan There are a few issues that your BCP must cover, such as: Disaster Recovery Healthcare call center disaster recovery is crucial. You have to be prepared to deal with software crashes, data loss, and disaster situations with ease. Interrupted Operations If your operations are interrupted and you have downtime, you have to limit this to be as short of a period as possible. You have to make sure there are systems that can help you deal with unplanned situations. High Availability You should have availability with your call center as much as possible, even if there are local failures or employees are in high demand or short supply. Get Sequence Health Services Reach out for help with your health care call center today at Sequence Health. We truly care about your patients and your practice. We want to equip you with the best technology, people, and strategies to grow. That way, your medical services can help the right people at the right time. Together, we can make the world a better place. So reach out for a free consultation today.
Speech Analytics & Call Centers 101 Written by Jeff Tormey on March 17, 2023. Posted in Connect, Healthcare Companies. In any healthcare organization, it’s always important to constantly look for ways your medical call center could be improving. That way you can truly meet the needs of your patients in your local market. That being said, a lot of healthcare organizations make the mistake of falling behind by not using data and analytics available to them. So in this blog post, let’s talk about healthcare call center voice analytics. We’ll explain what they mean and why they’re so important. That way you can ensure that you’re on the cutting edge of your healthcare services. And if you’re wondering whether a medical contact center is necessary for your organization in the first place, read this blog next. The Importance Of Contact Center Speech Analytics Identifying Correct Therapies, Medications, And Procedures Obviously, as a healthcare organization, your first priority is to help patients overcome their health ailments and achieve the best health outcomes possible. In order to do that, you need to identify what the best course of action is to help the patient heal, recover, or otherwise rid themselves of negative symptoms. There are two ways that you can approach this. First, you can use your educated guesses as experts. Secondly, you can leverage data and analytics. The reality is that data and analytics provides a lot of analysis that you may not have looked at initially. That’s why it’s so important to use this in your decision-making process. Otherwise, you could risk recommending a therapy or medication that isn’t as effective at that point in time for the patient. Retention Using data, you can understand when a patient is likely to churn. In other words, when they are likely to stop visiting your practice. After all, if they go somewhere else or simply stop coming, that does no benefit to them nor to you. So it’s important to recognize the patterns when patients are about to drop off, so to say. Read More: What Is Patient Retention and Why Does It Matter for Your Practice Enhancing Your Presence You can use data and analytics to understand which marketing campaigns, content, and promotions are working well online and in print. You can measure appointment rates, show-ups, and more to determine if your messaging is effective. Get Help With Your Speech Analytics Today At Sequence Health We have a medical call center, but we also specialize in digital media and growing any kind of healthcare program that you may have. Let us handle the administrative and staff complications of your healthcare operations. That way, you can focus on growing the medical services that you provide and treating patients at the highest level of respect and care. Reach out for a free conversation today.
Tips To Engage Inactive Patients Written by Jeff Tormey on March 14, 2023. Posted in Connect, Healthcare Companies. Patient reactivation is one of the most important topics when it comes to healthcare services. After all, if a patient falls out of engagement and is no longer active, they may miss out on important care. This could cause them to have worsening health conditions and even lead to fatal consequences. That’s why in this blog post, we’re going to talk about how to engage inactive patients to get them back where they need to be. Additional Reading: Empowering Patients To Be Active In Their Experience The Benefits Of Engaging Inactive Patients Some of the benefits of engaging in active patients are: Improving The Health Outcomes It’s so important for your medical practice to improve the health outcomes of your patients and prevent additional readmissions. Lowering the chance of hospitalization is another side effect of this. Overall Satisfaction The better satisfaction that your patients have, then the more that your medical practice can grow. Therefore, by providing excellent experiences and engaging the patients, they’ll feel like they’re more respected. This will lead to better responses and scores on evaluations as well. Read More: The Importance of Patient Satisfaction Limiting Mistakes You can’t afford to make mistakes with your patients. Otherwise, you could neglect to provide them with the best levels of care possible and your reputation will suffer. Therefore, the more engaged the patients are, the more you can learn about their specific situations and how to help them with the best approach possible. Reduce Patient Dormancy A patient who hasn’t been active or engaged in several years could be considered a dormant patient. This is the next step before they become a lost patient. You need to aim for a retention rate around 50% in order to break even on acquiring the customers. Otherwise, you risk spending additional revenues just to bring in patients to sustain your medical practices. Engaging Inactive Patients Engaging inactive patients is no small feat. You need to use a variety of methods available to you. The omnichannel approach is one way to achieve this. Using text messages, SMS, social media, email, and more, you can reach your patients wherever they are. So while there is no one-size-fits-all answer, consulting with professionals in this field can help you put together the right strategy. Improve Your Patient Engagement Today Reach out to Sequence Health. We can help you in a variety of ways in your medical practice, from medical insurance verification to appointment scheduling to patient reactivation. Our experts are proud to assist you in any way possible. You deserve a team that understands your industry and how to help your patients at the highest level.
Contact Center Quality Assurance: What It Is And How It Works Written by Jeff Tormey on March 10, 2023. Posted in Connect, Healthcare Companies. Call centers are incredibly helpful for your medical center in order to improve patient outcomes and enhance your internal systems. That being said, there are certain strategies that need to be adhered to. Otherwise, quality results and efficiency could drop off. Let’s talk about call center quality assurance and why it’s so important. We’ll also talk about some of the ways to enhance the QA in your medical call center. What Is Call Center QA (Quality Assurance)? Call center quality assurance, also known as call center quality management, is when companies make sure that the patient experience aligns with the goals of the medical facility as well. It’s important for keeping patients happy and also ensuring your own success. This also can help patients maintain loyalty over the long term. There are certain aspects to quality assurance such as first call resolution, empathy in the agent, the correct script tonality, language, and word choices, efficiency, and loyalty. Call Center Quality Assurance Guidelines Review Periods Every so often you should have a review period where you look at the KPIs and ensure that your organization is adhering to the standards that you set out. After all, it’s one thing to set a standard, it’s another thing to follow through with it. So you should ensure that all of your agents are sticking to the rules of the scripts. Patient Retention The more patients you lose, the more patients you need to bring in via acquisition. This can create financial costs that can be difficult to surmount. So part of your quality assurance is looking at how many patients are retained. After all, if you’re doing the right things, then your patient retention rate should be going up. In addition, ensure you are getting patient feedback consistently. For more information on its importance and how to garner feedback, read this next. Reputation Online Having an online presence is important, such as having a great website and social media presence. You should also be looking for online evaluations, ratings, reviews, and of course testimonials. Try to identify good reviews and bad reviews from previous patients. If there is a common thread in things that you need to improve upon, then that means that your quality assurance has a long way to go. Ensure Your Medical Call Center Is State Of The Art A healthcare call center should be more than simply people answering phones. From appointment scheduling to reducing churn to enhancing health outcomes, a healthcare call center can truly achieve significant results. So reach out to Sequence Health today. Let’s ensure that quality assurance guidelines are always met with any aspect of your medical call center services.
What You Should Know About AI Powered Contact Centers Written by Jeff Tormey on March 7, 2023. Posted in Connect, Healthcare Companies. When it comes to healthcare call centers, there are several benefits they can bring to your healthcare practice. However, you may be wondering about the difference between human call center operatives and AI. After all, there’s a lot of technology today that can help enhance your ability to serve patients. So let’s talk about the differences between AI and human powered contact centers. That way you can make the best decision for your organization. The Difference Between Humans Vs. Robots In Call Centers Most consumers would actually prefer to talk with a human than a chatbot. For that reason, AI may be incredibly powerful, but it’s not going to replace humans any time soon. Therefore, one of the important trends to keep in mind is that humans will continue to be an important touch point when it comes to patients for every kind of medical service available. After all, empathizing with somebody, understanding their needs, and having a real conversation cannot be outsourced to technology yet. We may one day reach a point where that’s the case, but we aren’t there right now. AI won’t replace humans in the call center in the near future. Furthermore, patients want to feel like you’re going the extra mile for them. If they are simply handed off to an automated messaging system, they might not feel like you truly care about their wants and needs. AI Advantages One of the advantages that AI can bring to the table, of course, is automation. It can perform a variety of tasks that it takes humans longer to do. This includes organizing files, documentation, research, and more. However, the right usage of AI is when human agents are able to use it to enhance their ability to serve patients and call centers. After all, it should always be a human touch whenever dealing with health services. Knowing how many call center agents to schedule is an art form in and of itself, of course. So it’s best left to the professionals. Learn More About Healthcare Call Center Services Today Reach out to the experts at Sequence Health. We’ll help you understand patient conversion solutions and your options are for healthcare call center services. We use a combination of human operators and technology to ensure you get the best level of service, results, and health outcomes for your healthcare organization. So let’s work together today.
The Best Tips To Reduce Call Center Shrinkage Written by Jeff Tormey on February 20, 2023. Posted in Connect. The competition for health services today is fierce. And ensuring that your healthcare call center is providing the best patient satisfaction and support is key in standing out among the rest. Of course, the nature of call centers is one-on-one support. This is incredibly helpful, however, it becomes a challenge because one agent can only be on one call at a time. Sometimes this leads to longer wait times or dead air, which makes patients unhappy. In contrast, when you schedule the right amount of agents and use a professional call center, these delays can be minimized. And of course, the ultimate result is higher patient satisfaction scores and a better reputation. For your medical care center. So in this post, let’s discuss the concept of something called call center shrinkage. As well as why it’s so important. Then we’ll also discuss ways that you can reduce call center shrinkage for better results. What Is Call Center Shrinkage? The concept of shrinkage is a popular term in the world of healthcare call centers. In its essence, shrinkage is the time in which agents are technically being paid but are not available to handle calls. Call center shrinkage can be caused by several things such as personal phone calls, tardiness, long breaks, personal emergencies, vacations, paternity or maternity leave, leaving early, meetings and more. Why Is Call Shrinkage Important? It’s important for call centers to maintain low call times, low wait times, and low dead air times. All of these help improve the customer satisfaction scores. Ultimately, that means that patients are being serviced appropriately, quickly, and in a friendly manner. The more shrinkage, the less effective a call center is considered to be. How To Calculate Shrinkage In A Call Center To calculate shrinkage in a call center, divide the number of agents that are required to take calls by the number of agents available. For instance, if you need 100 agents to take calls but only 50 are available, then the shrinkage would be 20%. This helps you understand how many more agents should be on the staff as a whole to account for shrinkage. How To Minimize Shrinkage In Call Centers An important process in any contact center is understanding how to reduce shrinkage effectively. For instance, it might be true that statistically the most shrinkage occurs between the lunch hours of 11am and 2pm. In that case, more employees should be scheduled during those times to account for the call volume. Another strategy is to stagger lunch breaks so that a small amount of agents are away from the phones at any given time. Ensuring your healthcare support center focuses on customer service KPIs is key as well. Knowing the right inquiries, call flows, and patient needs go a long way. Finally you can increase training or hire a call center team with a stellar reputation.This allows for patients to get their prescriptions refilled, follow up for appointments, and ultimately be able to chat with a service agent faster when they call into your medical center. What Does Shrinkage Mean In A Call Center – Summary All these factors are important for ensuring more referrals, repeat appointments, and the reputation of a healthcare facility. If you’re interested in reducing your call shrinkage time, reach out for medical call center services from Sequence Health today. Understand how proper shrinkage management can help you achieve the best health outcomes and satisfaction ratings for your patients.
Improving Reimbursement for Medical Claims: Explained Written by Jeff Tormey on February 15, 2023. Posted in Connect, Healthcare Companies. Private health care practices face challenges when optimizing and verifying health care claims for medical reimbursement. In order to be paid on time and consistently requires a lot of technology, support staff, and daily management. So no matter what type of health care practice you own or manage, let’s cover some ways to enhance your medical claim reimbursements. Ultimately that will allow you to grow your practice while serving more patients. Improving Medical Claim Reimbursements Follow these tips for better reimbursement protocols: 1. Reduce Billing Mistakes The topic of medical insurance verification is becoming more common. One of the most common causes of failing to get reimbursed is inaccurate billing. If the support staff is not adept at billing, coding, or organizational skills, this could be a problem. When you hire a professional team like Sequence Health, you can reduce mistakes. This is due to increased training and management for quality assurance. 2. Improve Documentation If patients’ claims are being denied because they don’t have sufficient documentation to prove a medical necessity, then this is going to affect your revenue significantly. This is especially true for Medicare patients. Increasing referrals and preauthorization is a key function of a medical call center. It can help you accurately document your procedures, referrals, and patient needs. This reduces the chance that a claim will be denied, while increasing the chance that a correct claim is filed. 3. Monitoring Medicare And Medicaid Patient Expenses Healthcare providers often take on expenses related to diagnosing or treating certain patients that are on Medicare or Medicaid. This can be time-consuming and difficult to assess. That’s why a support staff that understands these health plans is so helpful in ensuring that all of your costs are properly recorded. 4. Attention To Detail Every bill and claim should be done correctly the first time. With proper oversight and management, agents can be trained to look at every detail before sending or managing any claims. This also reduces the overall cost to the healthcare facility. The less time that agents spend on one case, the fewer expenses that filter out to the private practitioner. 5. Expertise In The Healthcare Industry General call centers or reimbursement staff may not understand the specifics of your practice or field, but experienced companies know how to ask the right questions. They can anticipate both your needs and the types of claims and reimbursements that are most relevant to you and your patients. Ultimately, this gives you peace of mind that you can focus on treating your patients and being compensated for your work appropriately. 6. Proper Organization Of Payer Details Your healthcare support team should understand your processes and payer contracts on a deep level. This makes the reimbursement process streamlined and organized. For instance, your credentials should be up to date and your insurance verification should always go to the correct insurer. A professional team will always double check this information. Optimize your Medical Insurance Verification Today Just a few tweaks in your processes can ensure that your billing and reimbursement collection goes seamlessly. However, the health experts in your organization should focus on what they do best. Leave reimbursement management, call support, and patient follow-ups to a team of professionals. Reach out to Sequence Health now and discover solutions for all kinds of private practices who want to increase the amount of reimbursements in less time.
How To Improve Your Post Discharge Follow Up Phone Calls Written by Jeff Tormey on February 13, 2023. Posted in Connect. Around 20% of patients experience a bad post-discharge event. This could range from infections to complications and more within 30 days. This represents a significant cost for healthcare providers and healthcare call centers. But what’s more important is that this is preventable by taking the right steps. Hospitals have a responsibility to reduce this post-discharge phenomenon. One way to do that is with post discharge phone calls. These have become a very important and popular way for healthcare providers to ensure patient success and satisfaction. In fact, some payer reimbursements from insurers require that patients answer surveys after they receive treatment. So it’s not just important for the growth of your organization, but many times for your financials or legal matters. So in this article, let’s talk about ways that you can improve your patient retention phone calls to provide a better experience and patient outcome. Benefits Of Post Discharge Phone Calls For Patient Satisfaction There are several advantages to making post-discharge calling: Increase Appointments And Revenues With telephone follow up after discharge from the hospital, you have a chance to increase the number of appointments that you can make for your services. Patient Health And Outcomes If someone is having a complication, they may not feel confident reaching out out of embarrassment or simply procrastination due to fear. Therefore, it’s your responsibility to reach out to them with a phone call so that you can diagnose any issues. Referrals If you reach out to a patient, they’re more likely to feel like you really care about their experience. Therefore, you’re likely to get referrals. All in all, a patient’s journey does not end when they leave your facility. It’s merely the beginning. And if you do optimize your post-discharge calling, you can enhance retention and avoid losing opportunities. How To Retain Patients With Post-Discharge Calling Without further ado, let’s get into how to increase your attention by calling patients after they’ve been under your care. When done correctly, it can be a lot more effective than simple EMR data or disease-specific checklists. These are only one piece of the equation. So follow these tips and ensure your post-discharge calling is the best in your niche: 1. Create A 360 Degree Profile Personalizing your outreach to your patients is essential. No one wants to feel like they’re treated like a commodity, especially when it comes to their healthcare. They want to feel like everything is prioritized for their specific needs, pains, and health outcomes. By asking personalized questions, medical call center professionals can get to the main reason that someone is either feeling good or bad about their service with you. It can also help reduce missed appointments, screenings, or preventative care. This is obviously crucial in ensuring the best health for everyone who visits your center. Additionally, creating a profile can help you reach your patients better. This comes from understanding when to call, how to communicate, and what type of communication method patients prefer in your area. 2. CRM / Integrated Data A post-discharge caller may traditionally have to use fragmented data and various technology platforms during their call. This makes the conversations with patients less detailed and more difficult. Also, patients may transfer various times. This reduces their experience. Consumers today want a more holistic approach. The one-call concept is best when using a CRM or other kind of patient management software. This allows agents to target and reach patients for follow-ups much easier. It makes the process more streamlined and reduces the time it takes to get crucial feedback. Read more: 5 Benefits of CRM in Healthcare Industry 3. Quality Scripts To Inform Future Strategy The right scripts from a medical call center can make all the difference in your post-discharge call. There’s various scripts that health systems use depending on the patient profile. A sophisticated service can use their CRM integration, previous customer data, and demographic info to make the best decision in the moment. From here, they can give you the feedback on what’s working in terms of scripts, outreach, and strategy. This allows you to grow your practice, increase satisfaction surveys, and ensure that prescriptions, insurance, and everything else on your agenda are effective solutions for healthcare. Final Thoughts On Discharge Phone Calls Post-discharge calling is considered the most effective way to stay in touch and retain those who have visited your medical center. By using a medical call center like Sequence Health, you can enjoy the services of a support team that understands your business. We know how to get to the heart of what patients are feeling and thinking to help verify insurance, increase appointments, and ultimately make your job easier. So reach out today and understand just how valuable medical call center services can be for you.
How to Improve Medical Call Center CSAT Scores Written by Jeff Tormey on February 10, 2023. Posted in Connect. When it comes to health call centers, customer service is critical. And the CSAT score is one way to gauge how successful your phone operations are in meeting patients’ needs. Any quality assurance measure aims to improve the level of service, understanding, and results. However, it is necessary to implement tracking measures so that performance can be measured on an individual basis across all of the agents in a call center. So in this article, we’ll explore how to improve CSAT scores in call centers. The higher the score, the better you’re doing. The lower the score, the more improvements that need to be made. What is a CSAT score in customer service? In short, CSTAT means customer satisfaction. And as you might have guessed, the CSAT score is a way to measure that customer contentment with your health practice. More specifically, a CSAT score for a call center represents how well the call center agents overall are meeting the needs of patients. How To Calculate CSAT In Call Centers After a conversation with a support agent from the healthcare call center, a survey is sent to that customer or patient. This survey is meant to garner feedback by asking questions such as: How would you rate your experience with our support? How would you rate your experience with our healthcare center? Are you likely to recommend our health services to others? How easy was it to find our location? How easy was it to navigate the website? Was our staff knowledgeable and friendly? How would you rate our services from 1 to 10? Do you feel like you received all the help you needed at our medical center? Is there any extra feedback that you have? Once the patient provides their survey response, their satisfaction will be calculated. For instance, if each question was given a scale from 1 to 5, then the answers would be considered positive, neutral, or negative as follows: 1 or 2 – negative 3 – neutral 4 or 5 – positive Thus, you can arrive at a CSAT score formula by dividing the total number of positive responses by the total number of responses multiplied by 100. So for instance, if there were 7 positive responses out of 10 total responses, the CSAT score would be 70%. At the end of the survey, the call center can also ask open-ended questions to allow for the patient to provide feedback that was not available via the preset survey questions. Net Promoter Score (NPS) The net promoter score is a similar customer satisfaction measurement. The net promoter score focuses on loyalty in addition to satisfaction alone. The results of an NPS survey are more binary. On a rating scale of 1 to 10, any answers that are below a 6 are considered detractors. Promoters are people who answer a 9 or 10. How To Improve CSAT Scores In Your Call Center CSAT score improvements include comprehensively solving the patient’s problem, proper escalation protocols for the right person, following up consistently, and quick response times. Now let’s talk about some other specific ways that you can improve CSAT scores: 1. One-On-One Communication Despite the rise of technology, many people still want to speak with somebody one-on-one. This can happen via email messaging or over the phone. It makes them feel like they’re truly heard. Contrast this with simply getting an automated message from a chatbot AI. 2. Monitoring The Right Metrics Data is power when measuring customer satisfaction. A call center should understand how to address key KPIs such as AHT (Average Handling Time), average first response time, and personableness of call center agents. 3. Enhance Performance With Key Technologies While it’s true that one-on-one communication is sometimes the best way to go, technology is important as well. In today’s day and age, the additional costs and time required to send automated messaging and provide AI-assisted service is minimal. It should be considered as an addition to your full service offering for scalability reasons. 4. Reviews Continue to review CSAT scores and understand what areas need the most improvement. Take action items every quarter to ensure that your call center is leaving patients satisfied. 5. Reduce The Dead Air Ratio Dead air means that there are elongated periods or pauses in which the customer simply hears silence. Patients today are very impatient, so the less dead air time that you can create with your call center systems, the more satisfied they will be. Improving Your Healthcare Call Center CSAT – Conclusion Reach out to Sequence Health to understand how our medical call center solutions can help your medical care facility. From appointment scheduling to patient care coordination to insurance verification to inbound calls, including our nurse triage service, which helps deliver timely, clinically guided patient support over the phone, our staff is highly trained in patient satisfaction. Focus on achieving the best health outcomes for your patients while allowing our experts to provide a streamlined form of communication and customer service for all their needs.