Given that you're reading this article, you're likely stuck in what we at Keona Health call the Staffing Trap: You lack the staffing resources needed to create positive patient access experiences. The Staffing Trap has been snagging healthcare providers, left and right, with astonishing efficiency. Call hold times and callback times are the longest they've ever been.
To blame for the healthcare staffing crisis, which has engulfed all corners of the industry, are a complex set of factors: Covid-19, The Great Resignation, a transforming economy, and more.
The staffing shortages are the biggest crisis facing the American healthcare system in decades. Half-empty medical call centers, operating at only two-thirds of their normal staffing levels—with the remaining few employees anxious, overworked, and miserable because they must manage a shocking number of patient calls—are a common sight.
The dire staffing situation at healthcare call centers translates to negative patient experiences. Patients find themselves waiting on hold, nervously pacing around their homes, desperate to speak with someone who can give them care or consultation, for countless minutes. Scheduling appointments is an even bigger nightmare: Patients must often wait until business hours to call, usually when they are at work, only to experience long hold times, phone tag, and scheduling errors. The difficulty of reaching their provider or care team, just to schedule an appointment, exhausts and aggravates patients, who are increasingly willing to switch to providers who offer online scheduling.
Customer satisfaction scores and staffing levels are plummeting in tandem. Contact centers simply can't handle their call volumes. But there are solutions: Respect and reward your call center staff—and give them the tools they need in the form of Clinical AI.
Patient access staff have vital but difficult jobs—peoples' lives are literally in their hands—but without effective tools, their work becomes almost impossible. This is a primary reason that telehealth staff, from agents to nurses, are leaving the industry in droves.
“This is a big problem for everyone,” Halee Fischer-Wright, CEO of Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), told Contemporary OB/GYN of the staffing shortages. “Health care is as much impacted as every industry is across the globe at this time."
"The MGMA has heard that 88% of medical practices [have] had difficulties recruiting front-of-office staff," added Fischer-Wright.
The causes, according to Medical Economics, include "no room for advancement, generational differences, greater salaries in other industries, and interest in working virtually."
For healthcare call centers, it is extremely difficult to deliver quality patient care, let alone an excellent patient experience, without adequate staffing. Unless these contact centers change the way they work.
Non-technological staffing strategies, which can help reduce turnover and attract new employees, include:
To successfully recruit employees—and to retain the employees you already have—you must offer salaries commensurate to the high-value work they perform. The health of millions of people depends on telehealth nurses, call center agents, and administrative support staff, so they must be paid more than fairly if they are to be viable long-term employees.
Regarding your long-term employees: They must be rewarded, both monetarily and with other perks, so that they know they are appreciated and valued. Keeping your experienced staff members happy is critical because they serve as both mentors and motivation to the new employees.
To ensure new staff members will excel in the role—and not burnout and quit after a few weeks or months—you should make the job duties crystal-clear from the start. Be transparent and thorough when explaining expectations. The goal, when hiring, shouldn't be a quick-fix; it should be to find employees who will remain loyal to your organization for years to come.
If you're desperate to escape the Staffing Trap, there is a technological solution: Clinical AI software. Knowledge workers need knowledge tools; without the right tools, there is only so much that can be accomplished via training.
Clinical AI software frees your organization from the Staffing Trap by automating your staff's workflows. Your phone staff become remarkably more efficient and require substantially less training. Contact center staff equipped with Clinical AI are able to handle 25% more calls per hour thanks to their streamlined processes. Average handle time drops by 40%, training time drops by 75%, and after-call work drops by 25%. This means you get highly-optimized operations with no increase in staffing costs.
This is what Clinical AI looks like in-action: When a patient calls your contact center, the Clinical AI automatically retrieves all necessary patient and provider data—a 360-degree view—so that your staff can immediately start helping the patient. The AI-software then guides your staff through the entirety of the call until a successful resolution.
Phone staff can thus, with speed and precision, give each and every patient superior care, consultation, and scheduling. Staff are highly-accurate, and they can quickly direct patients to the appropriate level of care, whether that be emergency treatment, a local provider, or a specialist. Staff can focus entirely on patients, rather than on process.
Despite this superior experience, many providers remain wary of investing in new technology—usually because they've been inoculated with the Big Lies.
Lie #1: Medical operations are so complex, you must hire and extensively train an army of staff—or you must pay high fees to premier vendors like Epic Systems, Salesforce, or IBM to customize smart solutions for you.
Lie #2: Your EHR is the only technology platform you'll ever need.
Those who work in the healthcare industry know, from experience, that their EHRs don't even begin to ease their staffing problems—despite what EHR salesmen keep telling you.
Custom configuration of Epic, Salesforce, Cerner, IBM, and other legacy platforms is incredibly expensive and it takes years. IT is tied up for decades in implementation, and then in maintenance and upgrades. The needs of the everyday person get ignored for the "big picture."
There's a dirty little secret that drives economics in nearly every industry: The real reason the economy class gets shafted is not because the company wants to treat them badly; they are their customers and the company wants their customers to be loyal. The economy class gets bad service because the real money, for legacy companies, comes from the big-ticket items. They need to justify high prices for first-class tickets, so they force visible and obvious disadvantages onto everyone else.
The industry behemoths drive all the press and marketing in this industry. Your pain translates to their gain.
Cheaper and easier automation exists that is made for the rest of us. And the benefits extend far beyond staffing:
All of these problems vanish when you furnish your phone system with Clinical AI. Your staff can swiftly and capably give patients the excellent experiences they want and the quality care they need.
The strength of the patient-provider relationship is usually not determined by the in-person interactions between patients and doctors—as counterintuitive as that may seem. The strength of the patient-provider relationship is usually determined by the level of convenience, or lack thereof, that patients encounter during their remote interactions. Improving your call center services is thus the best way to accelerate growth.
AI-assisted call support reduces errors—because software makes less mistakes than humans do—and because your staff's complex processes are made simpler thanks to fewer redundancies and other automation. Your staff, when equipped with Clinical AI, is less likely to make blunders that threaten patient safety.
Despite the many benefits outlined above, many medical call centers nonetheless remain hesitant to invest in AI-software. They believe there are simply too many barriers in their individual operation—too many variables—for the software to overcome. But if the software is sophisticated enough, these barriers evaporate.
A Clinical AI solution works even if:
But this isn't the case. Clinical AI software encodes provider scheduling preferences, which means complex schedules can be automated without sacrificing physician control.
You should not invest in Clinical AI if you are:
If you want to experience the benefits of reduced staffing pressure inside your contact center—for less money and with greater efficacy than the industry behemoths can provide—follow these golden rules:
This means giving your staff:
If you give your staff these things, you will enjoy a core team of high-performing employees who will remain loyal for years.
Related - Nurse Staffing Shortage: See and read the former Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse On Call, Gina Tabone, MSN discuss the nursing shortage in this video and blog article:
VIDEO: Triage Nurse Explains How To Solve Staffing Crisis (keonahealth.com)
Nursing Shortage Solutions: 14 Cures For The Nurse Staffing Crisis (keonahealth.com)