Call Center Operations
Intermountain Healthcare is a large integrated delivery network with hospitals and clinics across Utah and Idaho. Their centralized triage call center employs 40 nurses who handle various types of calls, including:
Post-discharge calls for Intermountain hospitals
After-hours symptom triage for primary care, women's health, and some specialty clinics
24/7 nurse lines for patients with certain insurance plans
Support for remote patient monitoring and patient service centers during business hours
Challenges
Prior to implementing CareDesk, the triage call center used another vendor's triage logic software. However, they faced limitations with that system:
Inability to customize workflows or protocols
Inadequate customer support
No integration with their Cerner EHR system
Limited reporting capabilities requiring manual data manipulation
The triage team wanted a solution that would allow them to expand services, improve efficiency through better integration and workflow customization, and access robust reporting.
CareDesk Implementation
In 2022, Intermountain implemented CareDesk across their triage nursing team. Key integrations included:
Bi-directional integration with Cerner EHR
Integration with Avaya phone system enabling patient lookup on inbound calls
Custom analytics reports for different service lines and quality monitoring
The Avaya integration automatically searches for the patient in CareDesk/Cerner, successfully matching over 50% of callers and saving significant time over manual lookups.
Results with CareDesk
With CareDesk, Intermountain's triage team has realized major benefits:
Enhanced EHR Integration:
The bi-directional link with Cerner has simplified charting processes, making data access and entry more efficient.
Handle Time Improved:
Call handle times improved as nurses adjusted to the new system
Expanded services:
The platform gives tools to easily expand to additional specialties like women's health
Flexible System Customization:
CareDesk’s adaptability allows for ongoing protocol and workflow enhancements, which are vital for expanding service offerings and adapting to patient needs.
Strong technical support:
Support from Keona Health has been instrumental in resolving issues promptly, ensuring continuous service improvement.
The support, the integration, and the ability to grow are the biggest values for us.
- Aubrey EliesonRobust Reporting Capabilities
Enhanced operational visibility and decision-making with customizable reports:
Monthly reports for the entire medical group
Granular patient-level reports for ED referrals and readmission tracking
Specific reports for departments like Nevada and women's health.
Automated reporting for external partners via SFTP
"The one thing I've really enjoyed is the ability to create customer reports. I just built one the other day for a Nevada partner so that they can track their readmissions better".
- Jared McMurrayContinued Improvement
The triage team continues to partner closely with Keona on optimizing CareDesk, including:
Gathering ongoing feedback and enhancement requests from nurses
Implementing provider notifications integrated with Cerner
Fixing reporting issues to ensure complete data availability
Improving support for documenting transgender patient interactions
Key Takeaways
Intermountain’s experience underscores several best practices for implementing a healthcare communication platform:
Seamless EHR Integration:
Essential for simplifying clinical workflows and ensuring data consistency.
Advanced Custom Reporting:
Enables targeted data analysis, helping to refine operations and patient care strategies
Executive Sponsorship:
Driving successful change management and user adoption
Vendor Partnership:
Collaborative relationships with technology providers are vital for evolving service capabilities and resolving technical challenges efficiently.
Service Expansion:
The flexibility of CareDesk supports the addition of new specialties, facilitating growth and the ability to meet diverse patient needs.
Intermountain continues to refine their use of CareDesk, focusing on enhancements such as provider notifications, support for diverse patient populations, and comprehensive data reporting. This ongoing optimization will help them further improve their triage services and overall patient care efficiency.
Posted By
Stephen Dean is COO of Keona Health, where he’s spent 13 years building AI systems that transform patient access. Before “agentic AI” was a term, his team was deploying autonomous systems that now handle millions of patient conversations annually.
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