Author: Mark Danielson

Healthcare isn’t just about doctors and clinics—it’s about how technology can make the experience smoother for patients. We talked about why putting patients first is the key to better healthcare experiences and why decentralized centralized scheduling works. Now let’s look at the tools that are changing the game in this next installment on “Transforming Patient Experience in Healthcare”.

Refresher: Must-Have Tech (The Basics)

Online Scheduling: The best systems schedule up to 70% of appointments online. It’s like booking a dinner reservation—no phone required.  If this is an area that is new to you there are plenty of other articles that can provide you with an overview

Apps and Websites: All EMR platforms let patients find you and book easily. Bonus points if they don’t need to log in just to check availability. This is a mature business offering with lots of good options regardless of your size.

Interactive Voice Assistants (IVA): This is currently the most exciting area in patient access.  Up until about 8 months ago, we were relegated to robotic, script-based tools of ever increasing frustration for our patients.  Those days are now behind us.  There are currently multiple options that can provide you and your patients with human sounding AI that can talk, understand, and schedule perfectly every time.  This tech is able to answer up to 70% of all scheduling, cancelation and rescheduling requests with development underway for billing, RX refills and many other interactions.  In addition to being easy to understand and conversational, it doesn’t make mistakes, answers 24/7, doesn’t quit, doesn’t take vacation, doesn’t get frustrated with patients, and never calls in sick. Like the other tech, there is an IVA to fit every size of operation.  It also allows you to bring the rest of your scheduling back on shore and into your clinics.  

Smart Fixes

Ever called a helpline and couldn’t understand the agent because they were offshore and your first thought was “this call is going to take forever”? In the last year, an accent neutralization software has launched that smooths out the offshore accent so that it sounds like the speaker has been in the US for years. This allows you to continue with the low cost of offshore but without the frustration that comes with it. Let us know if you’d like to hear it and we can connect you with them for a demonstration.

Why It’s a Win

When you maximize the use of current technology with a good in-clinic scheduling model you can improve your patient satisfaction without adding on-shore costs. Even if this doesn’t sound like something you want to do right away, if you aren’t using accent neutralization software and planning to roll out a new voice IVA solution, you should be doing both because you can take advantage of significant improvements and savings today. In the next article, we’ll reveal the secret weapon for patient support.

Last time, we introduced the decentralized centralized model to put patients first in our series “Transforming Patient Experience in Healthcare“. Today, let’s unpack how it actually works and why it’s such a big deal for healthcare.

Healthcare centralized call centers because schedulers in the clinics were inefficient and sometimes ineffective.  They were often pulled away to help in-office patients or look up records, leaving patients on the phones irritated and listening to hold music.  On the flip side, while clinic staff are engaged in phone scheduling, in-office patient experience suffers.  These conflicting priorities lead to frustration on all sides and a more expensive, yet poor overall experience.  

After the big push for centralized scheduling happened 10 years ago, both patients and doctors have been left concerned with lack of connection.  With a little work, these frustrations can be left in the past.  COVID-19 brought with it a mass transition to work-from-home (WFH) for call center work. Tools and processes were perfected.  In addition, AI voice solutions have matured in the last 8 months to the point where it can accurately handle up to 70% of frontline scheduling calls.  We can take these best practice processes and tools to build a model that retains the cost savings of a central, US-based call center and put the agents back in clinics to handle the more challenging scheduling requests.  

What’s the Idea?

The idea is simple – move your operation from a central location back into individual clinics by leveraging the WFH model and technology platforms.  This model puts scheduling teams inside clinics (decentralized) but manages them with centralized technology that you likely already own.  You just need to configure the clinic specific groups and a call handling overflow model within that technology. Think of it like a work-from-home call center, except the “home” is the clinic. Hire local schedulers who can build relationships with doctors and patients, while your current tech keeps everything efficient behind the scenes.

How It Comes Together

In-Clinic Schedulers: These folks handle inbound calls, wait lists, rescheduling, outbound reminders, and schedule management. They know the doctor’s preferences inside out.  They can also work real time to squeeze in and fill same day appointments. Their personal relationship with the doctor ensures smooth interactions between the patients and the doctors.  Calls that come in outside of clinic hours can be handled by US based WFH agents/nurses that have connections to the community.

Centralized Tech: If you have a centralized call center, you likely already have most of the technology that can support this model.  You will likely need to change your skillset groups and ensure you have overflow coverage in other local clinics for when any of your staff are out of office, but any standard call center platform should work here.  Now if you haven’t updated your call center in 20 years, please contact us!  We are happy to talk with you to share all the amazing improvements that have happened in this space for you, your staff, and patients.  There are now affordable call center platforms for all sizes of clinics.

Training Made Easy: Centralized call centers come with some big advantages over clinic-only scheduling.  One of those big advantages is training. New hires get trained centrally—online or in-person—before heading to clinics, so busy staff aren’t stuck playing teacher and new employees aren’t left to fend for themselves in the clinic.

The Payoff

Patients get a personal touch by talking to someone who is local, knows them, knows their doctor, and has a personal interest in them. Doctors maintain some control over their schedules, which boosts their morale and retention. And organizations save money by streamlining operations. One clinic saw a 25% drop in scheduling errors after switching to this model, patient satisfaction rose 8%, and provider schedule utilization rose 5%, as providers no longer purposefully blocked out time to make up for errors made in the contact center.

Next Up

Technology is the backbone of this approach. In our next piece, we’ll explore how thoughtful use of AI will empower you in ways that up until now have not been possible.

Picture this: You’re feeling under the weather and need to see your doctor. You call the office, wait on hold forever with an off-shore call center, and finally learn the next appointment is weeks away. Frustrating, right? For too many people, this is what healthcare feels like—a system built around the needs of the organization, not the patients. But what if we flipped that around and focused on the patient?

The Problem with Today’s Systems

Most healthcare setups prioritize what’s easiest for the company—centralized call centers or clunky websites that demand endless logins. Patients are left struggling to book appointments. They can never get their questions answered by their local clinic. Meanwhile, doctors are buried under an ever increasing load of patient messages because their centralized scheduling system isn’t set up to act for them and a vicious spiraling cycle is created. 

After a while, no matter how much we love our doctors, when it’s hard to connect with them, most of us give up and go elsewhere.

A Patient-First Approach

The secret to fixing this? Focus on the patient first, then the doctor. Focusing on these two groups will ensure greater success for the entire organization.

That means making it painless for people to find you, contact you, and schedule appointments. It doesn’t have to be perfect—just good enough to keep patients coming back.

Enter the Decentralized Centralized Model

One smart solution is a hybrid approach or a decentralized centralized model. It places scheduling teams right in the clinics to keep things personal, while using centrally administered technology to keep everything running smoothly. It’s the best of both worlds: a friendly, familiar voice for patients and cost-effective efficiency for the organization.

Why It Matters

When patients can easily book appointments and doctors have schedules that work for them, everyone wins. In this blog series “Transforming Patient Experience in Healthcare”, we’ll cover how and why a hybrid approach works, technology tools that enable the model, how nurse lines fit in, financial upsides, overcoming challenges, and where patient experience is headed in the future. In our next article, we’ll dive into how this model works and why it’s a game-changer.