The Benefits of Automating Patient Verification: Reduce Agent Burden and Improve the Caller Experience
When a patient calls their healthcare provider to make an appointment or to find out the results of a medical test, the first thing that the provider must always do is verify the patient’s identity.
Test results and appointments are part of a patient’s medical record and history of care, so it is important for privacy and legal reasons that health systems know that a caller is who they say they are. In addition to asking for full name and date of birth, this process usually involves additional verification requirements, such as a zip code or the last four digits of a social security number. Once a patient is verified, access centers use the authenticated information to locate the patient in their system and access any required information from their medical record.
Often, the responsibility of patient verification falls to agents in patient access contact centers. While this process is important, it can also be unnecessarily tedious for skilled workers. Constantly performing verification screenings takes valuable time and effort that could be spent personally assisting callers with complex issues. Contact center staff can’t guarantee exceptional patient experiences when they are under the pressure of high call volumes and unrealistic quotas, and this often results in long hold times for callers. Overloaded contact centers make for unhappy workplace environments with high employee turnover.
Fortunately, the Parlance solution automates the patient verification process. Parlance dialogs greet every caller with live voice recordings, instead of synthetic, robotic voices, allowing patients to speak naturally. Parlance asks patients questions to authenticate them, locates the patient’s medical records in the system, and displays this information to an agent. Agents see patient answers before their conversation begins, enabling them to provide better service. Parlance removes tedious and repetitive work for thousands of daily interactions.
Automating patient verification reduces the burden on patient access center agents while improving the experience for callers. Thanks to Parlance automated solutions, agents have time to do their jobs well. They are able to work at the top of their skillset while remaining engaged, focusing their energy on more complicated problems that require human interaction. Health systems save money when repetitive tasks are eliminated, employee turnover is reduced, and staff are able to handle increased call volume without the need for additional hiring.
By Parlance Team
