W H I TE PAPE R
Optimize Your Patient’s
Experience with
Healthcare Technology
When speaking of the optimal patient experience, many healthcare organizations focus solely on direct patient
care initiatives. Only recently have healthcare systems realized that the total patient experience starts with
front end processes. Patients today expect to have multi-media channels for contacting a physician, the phone
answered in a timely fashion, and their needs met at the first point of contact. They also want the individual
answering the phone to be knowledgeable about their particular issue and be treated respectfully, with
compassion, empathy and understanding.
Motivated by the increasing expectations of the patient,
Improved Communication Processes
healthcare institutions are putting more effort into the
When speaking of the communication process, it’s not just
following Triple Aim objectives that include:
about picking up the phone and talking to your patients. It
1. Improving the patient experience of care
begins with your patients and their first thought of “I need to
contact my doctor”. They may be apprehensive because they
2. Improving the health of the population
don’t feel well, in a hurry and need to check on an insurance
3. Reducing the per capita cost of healthcare
claim or tired because they are on their way home from work
and just remembered to call and make an appointment for
Creating the Optimal Patient Experience
Conventional approaches to improving the patient
experience are not working as expected. Innovative concepts,
technological capabilities, and a high commitment to the
quality of the entire patient journey are required. To be
successful, stages established for creating the optimal patient
experience through front end processes must provide:
1. Improved communication processes that put the patient at
the center of the interaction
2. Evolved analytics solutions that are capable of evaluating
the complete patient journey
3. Lean process improvement initiatives
4. Continual focus on quality assurance
their child’s school physical.
Their first point of contact with your healthcare system sets
the stage for their continuum of care regardless if they contact
you over the phone or through mobile technologies they use
in their day to day lives. Enhanced patient communications
at this first point of contact will improve patient engagement
and ultimately, your clinical outcomes.
Providers and healthcare systems are quickly becoming
more aware of the trend towards emerging technology.
To this point, the Case Management Society of America’s
(CMSA) annual survey of care providers demonstrates
that providers not only acknowledge the growing trend in
emerging communication technology usage but are also
using emerging communication platforms more regularly
themselves. When comparing the 2010 and 2012 Health
IT Surveys, responses indicate an increased use of text
messaging, social networking sites, member/patient portals,
wireless monitoring solutions, email and smartphone
applications.
Simultaneously, the use of several traditional patient
Start With the Basics
communication methods (facsimile, telephones and letters)
Healthcare analytics is not merely about collecting data; it’s
has decreased. While the percent of care managers and other
about analyzing it and creating actionable improvement
providers report that using the newer wireless and web-
processes. Analytics will help you understand your patient
based communication portals is much lower than those using
base and expectations. The basic measurements of a well-
traditional methods, emerging technology will undoubtedly
run healthcare contact center focus on time to answer,
continue to grow as healthcare consumers demand the
abandonment rate, average handle time, idle time, talk time,
ability to communicate with healthcare systems in the same
employee occupancy and non-productive time. Utilizing your
manner they do with other aspects of their lives. We are
telephony tools to analyze this type of data, and setting goals
witnessing what the 2010 CMSA survey predicted - the use
based on the findings, enables you to customize your target
of text messaging and social networking, such as Facebook
numbers by service line rather than using arbitrary industry
and micro-blogging (including Twitter) doubling in the past
standards.
24 months.
Quality Assurance Process
Other sources agree to the accuracy of this prediction.
Achieving the objectives of the Triple Aim requires long-term
According to the 2012 US Contact Center Decision-Maker’s
commitment to the Quality Assurance Process. This process is
Guide, the use of multimedia communication is rapidly
a series of steps containing activities and programs intended
growing and expected to continue to grow in the future.
to assure or improve the quality of care in either a defined
They predict that the adoption of web chat in the healthcare
medical setting or program that includes:
contact center environment will grow by 60% in the next 12
months. A recent survey conducted by Forrester Research
also concludes that the following healthcare contact center
technologies are an integral part of today’s healthcare
systems.
1. Assessment or evaluation of the quality of care
2. Identification of problems or shortcomings in the delivery
of care
3. Designing activities to overcome these deficiencies
IVR or Self-Service Speech Technology
62%
Workforce Management Solutions
58%
Chat Solutions
50%
Quality Monitoring
48%
Email Response Management System
44%
Case Management Solution
53%
4. Follow-up monitoring that ensures the effectiveness of
corrective steps
Steps in the Quality Assurance Process
Record
Calls
The question is, are you ready to make your patient’s first
point of contact with your healthcare system a satisfying one?
Evolved Healthcare Analytics
Healthcare organizations are taking on the challenge of
Share Results
and Goals
Convert
to Text
utilizing information systems to improve business and clinical
operations. They have also adopted process improvement
technologies such as Six Sigma and Lean to focus on a
patient centered approach, reduce errors and improve the
patient journey. Speech, text and desktop analytics must
be integrated at the first point of contact - the healthcare
contact center, to understand the patient’s journey and where
improved processes can make their experience and overall
outcome better.
Measure and
Observe
Create
Scorecards
Quality Assurance in Action
Patient Centered Focus
Having the right tools to adequately monitor the quality of
your calls will help you reach your quality assurance objectives
and Triple Aim goals with greater ease. In the majority of
healthcare contact centers, monitoring consists of listening
to five calls per month, per employee. Realistically, even
this minor goal is not consistently met given the day to day
expectations of healthcare contact center manager. Do
you know if your staff asks a patient if they have a referring
physician? Is basic demographic and registration information
being captured during each interaction? Is the patient being
treated in an empathetic manner? Solutions such as Aspect®
Healthcare – Speech Analytics can help by monitoring of
100% of incoming calls. You can create algorithms for the
coordination of care by collecting the scheduling questions
and tracking variations in patient responses. The end result is
that not only are you improving the patient experience, but
also the physician experience and bottom line results.
As the Healthcare Industry continues to drive towards patient
centered focus, it adopts the truth that the journey begins
with the initial point of patient interaction – the healthcare
contact center. More and more emphasis is being placed
on the qualifications of the employees and the systems
needed to streamline your patient’s first interaction with your
organization. When your patients need medical assistance,
they have enough to worry about. Aspect Healthcare and
Healthcare Intelligence can help you put your patients first
by creating a better patient experience at their first point of
contact with your healthcare system, your contact center.
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About Aspect
Aspect’s fully-integrated solution unifies the three most important facets of modern contact center management: customer
interaction management, workforce optimization, and back-office. Through a full suite of cloud, hosted and hybrid
deployment options, we help the world’s most demanding contact centers seamlessly align their people, processes and
touch points to deliver remarkable customer experiences. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.
About Healthcare Intelligence
Healthcare Intelligence enables Accountable Care Organizations to leverage a combination of technology, process
improvement, employee engagement and innovation to create successful patient centric access solutions.
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