Only a decade ago, it was quite difficult to imagine BPO agents being a part of the healthcare industry? Whenever people pictured the healthcare sector, they envisioned doctors, nurses, and medical specialists offering treatment and other patient care to sick, injured, and otherwise unhealthy people. It had nothing to do with contact center agents.
However, over time, contact centers and healthcare agents have become a cornerstone of every healthcare organization. Many healthcare providers started outsourcing patient care services in order to achieve their business objectives. This is because of the growing need to deliver positive patient experiences and meet patient satisfaction while also providing competent patient care. Unfortunately, some medical institutions continue to find outsourcing contact center solutions to be highly risk-driven.
According to a market survey, the global healthcare outsourcing market is estimated to hit 449.6 billion USD by the year 2023. The CAGR during this period of 2019-2023 is expected to be around 12.3%. This shows the increasing demand for streamlining customer support operations by reducing operational costs and enhancing team efficiency. Indeed these are the core reasons for considering patient care services outsourcing to be the future of the healthcare sector. Let’s dig deep into the details.
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Medical billing management:
Hospitals and medical clinics deal with huge piles of medical records every day. Hence, managing bills and sharing the right information with patients can often be extremely challenging. With healthcare customer support outsourcing, healthcare providers find it easier to access, store, share, and manage patient data and resolve billing issues conveniently.
Outsourced contact centers have a team of professionals to handle these time-taking tasks and fulfill the requirement of patients. These well-trained and experienced staff use the best tools to manage patient bills and records. For example, they use secure and encrypted databases to store the data and minimize billing hassles. Such databases are usually very sizeable and can store and process high volumes of data at a time.
Moreover, agents also use the database to fetch data whenever patients raise any issue related to their bills and payments. They leverage sophisticated technology to formulate invoices and help agents get appropriate solutions for their concerns.
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Claim processing and verification:
Healthcare BPO agencies are specialized in processing claims and verifying insurance. Whenever patients claim insurance during treatment or at the time of discharge or payment, healthcare providers delegate the tasks to contact center agents and have them deal with insurance verification, settlements, etc., to simplify and speed up the process. These trained professionals verify and validate all insurance information and process the claims swiftly so that patients can have their insurance coverages pay their treatment costs while medical facilities get paid at the earliest.
Hence, it is important to look for outsourcing patient care agencies that have a proven track record of swiftly and accurately verifying patients’ information, auditing, and error-free claim processing. In order to maintain accuracy, many customer service providers even use AI-driven tools. These tools are effective enough in managing large volumes of medical claims, thereby providing incredibly positive experiences to patients.
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Appointment scheduling:
Healthcare providers usually have a separate team to take care of appointments. However, they either ask patients to visit the hospital or make a call prior to the desired date and time to make an appointment. This is when they look for outsourcing patient care services. Studies have shown that healthcare providers teaming up with reliable BPO agencies can manage appointments without any hassle.
A reliable healthcare BPO agency has incredible expertise in scheduling appointments and sending timely reminders. The best thing about these agencies is they accept appointment requests from various communication channels. It can be via phone calls, text messages, social media platforms, or live web chats. No matter from which communication channel a patient appears to schedule an appointment, agents are always ready to accept them and schedule an appointment for the desired time and date.
Moreover, advanced BPO agencies use AI-driven tools to update doctors’ calendars so that they are also aware of their daily appointment schedules. Even if there is any change in the date, the dates and times automatically get updated on the calendar, and proper notifications are sent to the patients as well as the doctors. These tools are also very efficient in sending timely reminders so that no patient misses out on their date. They use emails or SMS to send automated notifications before the scheduled date.
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Patient complaints or queries management:
Patients knock on the doors of a healthcare provider not just to book an appointment or claim their insurance. They even connect with them to raise any complaint or share a query. These complaints or queries can be related to any treatment procedure, payment gateways, invoices, and many more. Hence, healthcare providers find it very challenging to handle numerous queries or issues at a time.
Top healthcare BPO agencies are capable of managing multiple complaints and queries. They have a dedicated team of experts to support patients whenever they encounter a serious issue. Additionally, they provide self-service options like FAQs and regularly-updated knowledge bases so that patients get the flexibility to resolve their problems without any human intervention. Such approaches make healthcare contact centers pretty effective for multispecialty hospitals and clinics.
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Patient surveys:
Outsourcing patient care services is not just confined to handling patient complaints and managing insurance claims. Many healthcare agencies are also experts in conducting patient surveys and building real-time reports. These surveys are properly constructed so that they get a clear insight into patient experiences, understand the impact of service deliveries, and optimize their customer services.
Patient surveys help agents gain actionable feedback. They create different sets of questions and share them via email, text message, live chat, and other communication platforms. The best part of these survey programs is agents can simply create reports, analyze data, and improve their customer communication strategies accordingly.
How to find the right healthcare BPO partner?
A few considerations you must make while choosing appropriate healthcare BPO agencies are as follows.
- Omnichannel strategy – Contact centers allow patients to choose any preferred channel for communication. Such as – social media, email, live chat, phone support, etc.
- Multilingual support – Patients can choose their native language to interact with agents.
- 24X7 assistance – Trained agents serve customers round the clock.
- AI-driven systems – AI-powered tools streamline customer support operations.
- Real-time analytics and reports – Analytical reports help contact centers improve their customer support strategies.
- Comprehensive services – A wide range of healthcare customer services help healthcare providers improve their core competencies.
Consider outsourcing patient care for better experiences
Like any other industry, the healthcare sector is setting new standards by adopting premium contact center services outsourcing strategies. Studies have confirmed that healthcare providers that acknowledge the importance of patient care outsourcing have experienced greater heights compared to others. It helps build a greater competitive edge for the business in the market, driving higher revenues and better ROI.
So, if you desire to experience better outcomes, reaching out to an inbound and outbound contact center for patient care services can be hugely effective. These third-party agencies are efficient and can prove to be the difference that will take your healthcare business to the next level. It will definitely give you benefit in terms of improving response time.