Quality patient engagement is critical in today’s healthcare industry. In fact, patient engagement and patient satisfaction is so important that it has become one of the leading indicators used to measure the quality of the services provided by a hospital, medical practice, or other healthcare provider. Time and time again, research has demonstrated a direct correlation between patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes, patient retention, and even medical malpractice claims.
Considering the importance of patient engagement and considering the value-added benefit of patient engagement and patient scheduling services being handled by highly-trained healthcare call center professionals, it becomes quite clear why over 70% of U.S. hospitals and a rapidly growing number of medical practices have turned to fully-inclusive healthcare call centers as their Patient Communication Management solution.
The Benefits of Utilizing American Health Connection Healthcare Call Center
Patients contact your healthcare organization for a wide variety of reasons, with nearly all of them surrounding one very important theme – the health of the patient or the health of a loved one. Understanding this central tenet of your healthcare organization, American Health Connection (AHC) offers an expansive range of patient center services specifically designed to provide an efficient, empathetic, and effective user experience with every patient healthcare call center interaction.
Our AHC patient-centered medical answering service staff are medical call center experts based in the United States and available 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.
In addition to assisting with general answering and scheduling service responsibilities, our AHC medical communication specialists are ready to support your patients by:
- Verifying eligibility in specific insurance plan coverage
- Assisting with explanation and understanding of EOB services
- Scheduling of preventative care
- Addressing general inquiry related to patient billing and payment collection
- Collecting payment
- Monitoring and providing updates on submitted claims
- Facilitating escalating or urgent matters by connecting patients with on-call physicians, nursing services, medical interpretation services, or pharmaceutical services.
American Health Connection’s Healthcare Call Center Patient Communication Management Service
In addition to being designed as a centralized patient-centered medical appointment scheduling service, AHC’s fully-customizable Patient Communication Management service is built to assist your administrative staff with a range of scalable, cost-effective essential healthcare call center services, including:
- Patient Education and Patient Outreach Services
- Physician Referral Services
- Appointment Reminders
- Discharge Follow-Up
- Chronic Care Management (CCM)
- Revenue Cycle Management
- Patient Access Consulting
Centralized Patient Scheduling Services
AHC’s highly trained healthcare call center and customer service experts understand the amount of time, effort, and resources patient scheduling services demands from your medical and healthcare administrative staff. AHC also understands the importance of being proactive and establishing trust throughout your patients’ experience with your organization.
AHC’s healthcare call center centralized scheduling services maximize efficiency with every call utilizing a one-call solution to streamline the patient scheduling process. Our Patient Communication Management service and fully-customizable centralized scheduling process ensures that each patient
- engages with a live and experienced healthcare call center professional;
- interacts with specifically assigned agents responsible for handling every step of the medical scheduling and patient engagement process; and
- utilizes only one designated phone number to connect and interact with your medical organization.
Additionally, the AHC centralized scheduling platform is fully-customizable to the needs of your organization and is designed to allow you to include the combination of healthcare call center scheduling services that’s just right for you and your team. Our centralized patient scheduling service allows you to save time, improve patient and physician satisfaction, and increase revenue by choosing from any or all of the following options:
- Optimized Pre-Registration Services
- Pre-Authorization
- Deductible & Copay Pre-Collection
- Insurance Verification
- Medical Necessity and Order Verification
- Scheduling of Required Language Services
- Healthcare Concierge Services
- Pre-defined Customized Reporting Capabilities
Patient Education and Patient Outreach Services
Few, if any, healthcare organizations have the staffing capacity required to manage patient education and outreach services that are specifically customized to meet the unique needs of their patients. AHC’s healthcare call center patient outreach customer service experts are specifically trained on how to attract, guide, educate, and inform patients of the health care initiatives you are offering as a way to meet their specific needs.
Available 24/7, AHC’s multi-lingual agents are always ready and available to assist with event and campaign advertising and auto messaging as well as patient scheduling and enrollment in classes designed to improve the health and wellness of your patients (and even your staff).
Physician Referral Services
Using our industry-leading medical scheduling technology service, AHC agents serve as the link between patient and healthcare provider. Working from your specific guidelines and treatment protocols, our healthcare call center agents identify the best and most appropriate resources to address your patients’ needs.
As a part of the AHC Physician Referral Service, our healthcare call center agents will always utilize our same call appointment scheduling process to contact patients within 24 hours of discharge, schedule any required follow-up appointments, and collect and report necessary information, data, and results to both the patient and the required healthcare providers.
AHC Appointment Reminders Reduce Costly Patient No-Shows and Missed Appointments
Patient no-shows and missed appointments cost U.S. healthcare providers over $150 billion each year and are among the leading interrupters in the revenue stream of any healthcare practice.
Fortunately, research has shown that healthcare and medical organizations who utilize healthcare call centers that send voice, text, and email reminders about upcoming appointments have been consistently shown to reduce their patient no-shows by up to 50%.
The AHC appointment reminder system is fully integrated into our ACD platform and utilizes fully customizable voice, text, and email reminders strategically sent to your patients based on each upcoming appointment, location, procedure, and test.
Our appointment reminder service eliminates the need for additional and unnecessary direct patient contact with your office and provides patients with the seamless opportunity to reschedule an upcoming appointment with AHC’s live appointment scheduling services.
Considering that the average healthcare provider averages between a 5% to 7% no show rate, and just one no show per day can cost a practice anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 in lost revenue each year, our fully-integrated AHC appointment reminder service offers your organization a viable path to significantly increased revenue.
Discharge Follow Up
AHC understands the importance of communication – especially when it comes to the health of your patients and especially after they are discharged from care. AHC’s client-dedicated healthcare call center specialists identify and message your high-risk patients within 24 hours of discharge.
Communicating with patients after discharge not only continues the patient engagement process, but it’s also been shown to reduce readmission of high-risk patients by over 40%. By comparison, the industry average is one in five high-risk patient readmissions within 30 days of discharge – meaning an automated discharge follow-up system reduces readmission to the hospital by 55%.
Chronic Care Management (CCM) Services
Chronic care management (CCM) services are billable non-face-to-face services provided to Medicare beneficiaries who have multiple (two or more) chronic conditions
AHC’s advanced technology, tools, and resources allow us to facilitate, integrate, and in some cases, automate, the interaction between patients and healthcare providers during CCM services.
Our trained and licensed healthcare call center staff build supportive relationships with and between CCM patients and providers while also coordinating support for the appropriate services for the patients’ health needs. The AHC staff maintains the comprehensive care plan and monitors and reports symptoms, behaviors, and patient concerns to the primary care physician.
CCM services are able to be implemented over the telephone and through secure messaging, internet, or other asynchronous non face-to face consultation methods, including e-mail or your provider-based secure electronic patient portal.
In addition to providing needed services to your patients with multiple chronic conditions, AHC CCM services creates and manages an additional revenue source for your organization.
Revenue Cycle Management
AHC’s streamlined, fail-safe protocols are designed to ensure your revenue cycle begins on the first patient call and continues throughout the course of your relationship with each patient. Carefully crafted to ensure a successful revenue cycle process, AHC’s revenue cycle management process reduces claim denials and ensures efficiency during pre-registration, order verification, pre-authorization, eligibility verification, and discharge follow-up.
Patient Access Consulting
Using our patient-centered one call approach, AHC works directly with you to develop a customized patient communication plan that ensures industry-leading patient engagement by incorporating all required care coordination and financial clearance process, including:
- Scheduling
- Pre-registration
- No-show Management
- Data Integrity
- Interactive Scripting
- Financial Advocacy
- Performance Metrics and Dashboards
Fully Customizable AHC Patient Communication Management Services Increases Communication, Efficiency, and Revenue
American Health Connection’s Patient Communication Management services gives your organization the opportunity to provide the flexible, comprehensive, real-time care and engagement that your patients expect and appreciate. As the focus rapidly shifts to value-based care, personal engagement with patients has never been more essential to the success of your healthcare practice.
AHC offers the healthcare industry’s only all-inclusive, cloud-based, full-service, virtual central scheduling and patient communications services. Our comprehensive medical answering service solutions are specifically designed to significantly improve scheduling and registration workflow, maximize client resource utilization, and reduce costs while also monitoring patient health outcomes and ensuring a strong relationship between practitioner and patient.
Are you ready to dramatically improve scheduling and registration workflow, enhance patient and physician satisfaction, maximize client resource utilization and reduce costs?
You have come to the right place.
Click Here To Schedule A Demo Or For Questions About Our Services
