Case Study - Chesapeake Urology Associates

Office Locations: 19
Surgeons: 56
Mid-Levels: 14
Calls: 140,000/year

Despite a successful call center launch, they faced several problems regarding maintaining their quality of service while scaling the call center. Like most practices, the number one patient complaint was not about their doctor, but about how calls into the office were handled. They had built standard operating procedures (SOPs) for their call center staff for each type of call, and tracked their call stats relentlessly. However, the SOPs were housed on a Sharepoint site that was not quick or easy to navigate. Documenting each call took time, lengthening the wrap-up time. Doctors received unclear messages and not all the information they needed was captured. New patient appointments were not evenly distributed. Staff training took weeks, which made the high turnover call centers face particularly expensive.

The callers themselves received inconsistent responses when they called in. This was amplified by the fact that there was often a lack of documentation trail for previous calls. Besides the operational difficulties, Chesapeake Urology has extensive growth goals and has always aimed for superior patient experience. They know that good experience drives growth. Safety and accuracy of calls is, of course, paramount in a health care context. They knew they needed to improve these while reducing the cost per patient of handling calls.

Health Desk is integrated into Chesapeake Urology’s electronic health record (EHR). This means that all the patient records are at the agent’s fingertips, and all pertinent phone documentation can be written to the chart.

During implementation, Keona Health imported nearly 40 custom scripts and protocols into Health Desk. Chesapeake customized their workflows and queues to fit their unique structure. Not only does the call center use Health Desk, but each location was trained to use the software as well. Patient search, documentation, scripts, and guidelines all are quickly within an adaptive, one-page interface.

Keona Health developed for Chesapeake a “round robin” tool to allocate high value inquiries and appointments equitably across providers.

Because of these efforts, consistency and quality increased. Training new agents was shortened from weeks to hours. The documentation was standardized and written directly into the patient’s chart.

Even more, there were significant operations improvements. First, the number of calls forwarded to the physicians decreased. The calls per hour from slow performers and new hires increased by 25%. After call work time decreased across all calls by 24%. Beyond these, because each call was scripted and less stressful, the auxiliary time savings equated to an additional 15 minutes per day per person. Key metrics for all calls are tracked with an online dashboard that also supports custom and ad hoc reporting.