At the start of COVID-19, Gina Minas, director of access at Northwestern Medicine, was faced with some daunting numbers: Each year, her call center team handles 7.6 million calls. She has 260 agents. With only 20 percent of her staff already working from home before COVID-19, she had only seven days to transition 80 percent of her staff to a WFH environment.

Lumeon, the leader in care automation, today announced the findings of its 2020-2021 U.S. Patient Access Leadership Report. The research uncovers the biggest challenges encountered by patient access leaders during COVID-19—among them, the fragmentation of the patient experience, processes, and technology.

According to MidMichigan’s virtual health experts, this milestone was the result of early system-wide investment in the technology coupled with a dramatic increase in demand for virtual care services during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The company not only handles the Schmitt-Thompson Office Hours protocol set but also the Schmitt-Thompson After-Hours protocols. “We’ve grown beyond group practices and now sell to a number of clinics, hospitals, after-hours call centers and insurance companies,” says President Dave Schmitt. “We have 500 clients now, which are more than triple what we had three years ago.

What constitutes a positive or negative experience at a medical appointment? The answer can help healthcare call centers as they strategically look at the services they provide. For example, some call centers are considering, or have already become ...

There is telephone nurse triage and then there is telephone nurse triage for cancer patients. They are not the same, says Margaret Hickey, RN, MSN, MS, OCN, President of the Gulf Breeze, Florida-based MMH Communications, LLC and co-author of Telephone Triage for Oncology Nurses.

Explaining and teaching with a human touch: Video is everywhere these days – including the call center. Video makes face-to-face...

“I don’t want to bother you. I just want to spend five minutes talking to you. I think it might help me feel better.” When Maggie Ozan Rafferty, chief experience officer at Blessing Health System, thinks about all the calls she’s gotten over the last few months during COVID-19, that’s the one that stuck out to her the most.