THE CONNECTED PATIENT EXPERIENCE: IMPLEMENTING A CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTER

Transcription

1 SPEAKER HEALTHCARE THE CONNECTED PATIENT EXPERIENCE: IMPLEMENTING A CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTER Announcer: Welcome to Navigant On Healthcare, offering insights for healthcare leaders striving for success in an evolving industry. Welcome to Navigant On Healthcare. I m your host Alven Weil, and today we are speaking with Kristin Greenstreet, managing director KRISTIN GREENSTREET and member of the executive leadership team for revenue cycle Managing Director, Navigant kgreenstreet@navigant.com at Navigant. A Lean Six Sigma black belt, Kristin has extensive experience in the management of hospital, health system, and physician practice revenue cycle improvement initiatives. This includes financial and operational assessments, prioritization of navigant.com strategic revenue cycle initiatives and process and tool improvement. She also leads a solution development innovation team for revenue cycle, which includes focus on customer contact center initiatives. Welcome, Kristin. Kristin Greenstreet: Thanks so much, Alven. So, Kristin, a major trend we re seeing in healthcare today is consumers being more involved in their care decisions and, with that, higher expectations related to the customer experience and overall patient satisfaction. What do you feel have been some of the main drivers for this increase in need to focus on the patient experience? Yeah, I think that s a great question, Alven. I mean, I think you re absolutely right. This whole focus on patient choice and patient experience has really become a top priority for providers across the country and, although not a brand new topic in healthcare, it s definitely heightened. I think, you know, the bottom line is there s just been so many shifts recently in the industry that are driving organizations to have to make this area an immediate area of focus. And I really summarize it, probably in three key areas that are driving this heightened focus. The first is really, there s a ton of new and changing competitive landscape, and we re seeing things now where health systems are competing with people that really didn t even exist as competition five to 10 years ago. If we just look in the past year or so, you know, we have examples such as CVS and Aetna, $69 billion deal. Forbes called that merger literally a mortal threat to U.S. About Navigant Navigant Consulting, Inc. (NYSE: NCI) is a specialized, global professional services firm that helps clients take control of their future. Navigant s professionals apply deep industry knowledge, substantive technical expertise, and an enterprising approach to help clients build, manage, and/ or protect their business interests. With a focus on markets and clients facing transformational change and significant regulatory or legal pressures, the firm primarily serves clients in the healthcare, energy, and financial services industries. Across a range of advisory, consulting, outsourcing, and technology/analytics services, Navigant s practitioners bring sharp insight that pinpoints opportunities and delivers powerful results. More information about Navigant can be found at navigant.com.

2 hospitals. You know, Optum, having double digit growth while hospitals are flat or declining, the purchase of DaVita by Optum and United [UnitedHealth], that s giving them access to 1.7 million new patients that they didn t have before. And then, you know, companies like Amazon and Apple that are ramping up focus on healthcare. So, you know, I think one key reason for this focus on patient experience is really that we now have competitors. We, being the health system, now have competitors that are hyper-focused on solely how to pull patients from traditional healthcare settings and that s going to have a tremendous impact on the volume and the revenue flowing through the hospitals and health systems. And, kind of related to that, is kind of a second key area, which is new access points and care delivery models. So, if we think of how people operate today with other industries, we re all about instant gratification. We have Amazon Prime, one day delivery. People don t want to leave their homes. They want things coming to them. So, we re seeing a big focus on patient convenience and ease of access. And so, things like concierge medicine, telemedicine, at-home care, retail health where you don t need appointments, you can just walk in at a lower cost you know, these are all things that, once again, they re delivery models that are not as common yet in the traditional hospital healthcare setting, yet things that there is patient demand for, and patients are looking for. And then, finally, it s gotten so much more expensive. Either increased cost-sharing and patients are having climbing deductibles and out of pocket spend, which is much higher than they were traditionally used to. And, frankly, I think that s causing patients to shop around more and demand higher levels of service. So, once again, although the concepts of consumerism and patient experience are not new, I do think that organizations are now faced with risk. And that risk is: you re losing significant volume and revenue, which will have tremendous financial impact on the hospitals and the health systems if they don t shift their focus on how best to secure what I ll call a lifetime patient for the organization. So, Kristin, given these shifts and these factors and the enhanced need to focus on patient experience, how are hospitals and health systems adding more patient-centered capabilities? Well, you know, over the past few years, I think the healthcare providers have tried on smaller scales and in different pockets to improve their patient experience. You know, we ve seen things like posted ER wait times, new apps developed, improved food services, or facility renovations or improvements. You know, a lot of these traditional methods have been used to really see if they could improve the overall patient experience within the hospitals and health systems. But, recently, what we re really seeing is that the forward-thinking organizations are really focused on how to best attract and keep patients. So, how are they going to avoid losing them to some of the new competition and the other access, you know, to care that they re seeing in the market. And, one of the biggest areas of focus that we re seeing is the design and implementation of customer contact centers. So, you know, a customer contact center is not just a call center. It s not just what you think of when you think of the traditional call center, especially in healthcare. The customer contact center really is a centralized infrastructure that really needs to bring together a connected experience, or shared services, for the patient. So, think about it as a one-stop-shop approach. But, a one-stop-shop approach for really all the needs that the patient or that customer might have and, so, if we think of most of our hospitals and healthcare organizations today, I mean, let s face it, we re behind even with basic call centers. So, if an organization has a call center today, they often only offer partial services to the patient for certain departments, or certain areas of the hospital, or physician practices. The technology is typically fairly-limited, and definitely heavier on the phone, telephonic services, and EHR portals. When you think about a customer contact center, a kind of new age approach to this, you really need to think about how you re currently interacting with industries outside of healthcare. So, a customer contact center needs that foundation where you have omni-channel capabilities, you know, ways for the patients and the customers to text, , call, online chat, go into apps, go into portals, have self-service options. 2

3 You want your patients and your customers to be able to interact as easily with you as they do with their bank, or hotels, or scheduling a Disney vacation. And so, within healthcare, once again, as we look at the organizations that are really launching into this area, they re looking at establishing this infrastructure where they can connect their customers to all services. And some examples: Access (scheduling, referrals, appointment reminders) Any financial services that they might have (Do they need financial counseling? Do they need to pay their co-pays or deductibles prior to service?) Customer service (Do they have questions about their bills, or about how to get to the department or the physician that they re going to see?) Clinical delivery (Can they access things like triage, nurse on call, prescription refills?) Population health The gist of the customer contact centers, is that you really form this service where the patient feels that it is as simple as a one-click or one point-of-contact into your health system to really get exactly what they need. And that s a huge paradigm shift, if you think about it, for many hospitals and health systems across the country. Kristin, what does implementation of a health system customer contact center look like and do you have any do s or don ts that you can share? Now, every organization will have a slightly different journey and that s going to depend on what you re starting point in this area is. But, I think a few key points of consideration when looking to implementation, the most important and the step that I think a lot of people end up skipping, or not spending enough time on, is dedicate upfront to the planning and strategic design of the customer contact center. What infrastructure might you have already invested in that you can leverage and carry into this new model, versus where are your gaps? And that can then be coupled with the next step of really defining your strategic vision. So, I think one of the key areas when organizations come to define their strategic vision and the design, one of the biggest mistakes I see is that they are designing and completing their vision really for the short term. Let me give you an example of that. Many organizations are starting their journey with scheduling and financial clearance services. And, in my opinion, that s a great place to start. There is tremendous need in the community and from your patients and customers that this can be a great area for you to start your journey with your customer connection center. However, what I d urge you to do is think broader than that when you re doing your vision and your design. And, what I mean by that is, make decisions that are helping you build a foundation and an infrastructure for the entire customer contact center that will really allow you to grow beyond that scheduling and financial clearance down the road. So, what you want to avoid is not doing and redoing every single year. You want to have a three, five, 10 -year vision on what this is going to look like for your organization, so that you have the base infrastructure to continue to support expansion and growth and you can be nimble enough to really expand your services and keep up or outpace your competition. Once you have your design and your vision, you obviously want to have very detailed implementation planning and spend a lot of time on the business case, the ROI and the metrics. And, this is really another area where I would say a lot of people struggle, because there is investment to be had, you do need to invest to get your customer contact center up and running, but there s also tremendous financial value from doing this and many organizations have struggled to capture that upfront and know how to best track and monitor and manage the return that you get from this type of endeavor. 3

4 So, I would definitely urge you to make sure that the focus of the business case and the ROI is a big part of your upfront implementation planning. And then, at that point, you ll want to focus on the build, the people, the process, and the technology necessary to implement that foundational hub for the contact center, standardize and integrate the functions that you ve prioritized, and then establish the metrics and the accountability necessary. Do s and don ts: I know, Alven, you asked about that as well, and there s certainly probably more than we ll have time to go through. I certainly mentioned a few already, but in addition to the focus on the long term vision, I would say it is important to invest in the technology infrastructure necessary to support this model. Fortunately, many other industries are what seems like light years ahead of us and we can leverage what they have learned, and tweak. And the technology is not as expensive as it used to be. It s very achievable from a budget perspective within our healthcare organizations, so be sure to factor that in, and invest in the necessary technology. It s also important to bring together all the necessary stakeholders. This is not a project or an initiative that can be kind of a one department area focus. It s very multi-faceted and there s going to be tremendous change for the organization, and so it will be important that you include all of the necessary stakeholders in the execution of this model, whether it be revenue cycle, the physicians, clinicians, population health, strategy, marketing, IT there s a lot of key stakeholders that will help make this successful. And then, finally, learn from the mistakes of others. So, there are horror stories out there of people that have tried to embark on something like a centralized scheduling, centralized contact center-type of approach that has gone awry. And there s lessons to be learned from those organizations and I would say a lot of it has to do with some of the do s and don ts that I just mentioned, but we are in a position where we can learn from others mistakes within healthcare and in other industries and make sure that you avoid those pitfalls and that potential risk as you embark on your journey. Let s say I m a provider executive. What kind of impact can I anticipate from an organization as a result of a successfully-implemented customer contact center? A successful customer contact center will provide several things for a health system. First of all, it s going to give a single point-of-contact to serve your customers and the reason we call it a customer contact center instead of a patient contact center is really, although a lot of what I ve talked about so far has been focused on the patient, there are other customers you ll serve as well. You ll serve physicians, your employees, your partners and your vendors, and really this is an infrastructure that can serve and meet the needs of many different types of customers for your organization. But, the key is that single point-of-contact and that standard upfront face to your organization. It s also, and this is a good segue into, it will improve the customer experience. And, given the fact that we re all fighting for the same dollars and the same patients and volume, creating those patients for life is a critical area focus for most organizations today. And so, you can definitely expect that, if done well, this customer contact center could have a tremendous impact on your customer experience. It s also going to improve access to all the services across the continuum. And, where this is key is when we really look at where health systems are losing volume, a lot of what patients will talk about is how difficult it is to find and book and know where to go for all of their services, whether it be hospital, physician, clinic, post-acute care. If the goal is really to keep all of the patient services within the family of one health system, the easier and more coordinated we are across the continuum to make sure we shepherd that is key. And, executives can definitely feel assured that this type of approach with the customer contact center would enable that, and would provide a heavy level of focus on that. And, finally, it s going to improve the financial position of your organization, from multiple points of view. It s going to increase your volume, increase customer acquisition and retention, you ll have increased margins through things like improving staff productivity, decreasing bad debt, decreasing denials through improved focus on financial clearance activities and data gathering upfront, and most importantly, give you competitive advantage against some of those new entrants, competitors that we discussed earlier, which health systems and hospitals are really at risk of losing to. 4

5 So, Kristin, what would you say to organizations considering a customer contact center about the link between improved customer service and improvements in revenue and reduced costs? I think, simply, what I would say is that, in my opinion, it s no longer an option to focus on patient experience. It s really now a requirement for long-term growth and sustainability. Customer contact centers will be a necessary requirement for organizations from a competitive advantage perspective, and I think it will be a key driver in retaining lifetime patients within hospitals and health systems. Kristin, great information. That you so much for joining us. It was my pleasure. Thank you, Alven. Announcer: That concludes today s episode. Be sure to check in with us for future installments of the Navigant On Healthcare podcast series on navigant.com/healthcarepodcast. Navigant On Healthcare is a podcast series produced by Navigant s healthcare practice. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with friends and colleagues on social media. Learn more at navigant.com. linkedin.com/company/navigant-healthcare twitter.com/naviganthealth 2018 Navigant Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. W67802 Navigant Consulting, Inc. ( Navigant ) is not a certified public accounting or audit firm. Navigant does not provide audit, attest, or public accounting services. See navigant.com/about/legal for a complete listing of private investigator licenses. This publication is provided by Navigant for informational purposes only and does not constitute consulting services or tax or legal advice. This publication may be used only as expressly permitted by license from Navigant and may not otherwise be reproduced, recorded, photocopied, distributed, displayed, modified, extracted, accessed, or used without the express written permission of Navigant.