A New Switchboard Replacement for Hospital Call Centers

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Your hospital switchboard works, until it doesn’t.

One power outage. One misrouted call to the wrong on-call physician. One overwhelmed operator threatens to walk off the job when a critical transfer is delayed.

These aren’t just technical hiccups—they’re signs your hospital’s nervous system is failing. And your patients, staff, and care outcomes are all suffering from it.

While you’re patching an aging on-prem system with workarounds and hope, your team is so used to adapting to failure that it somehow feels normal.

Maybe the last vendor transition was a disaster. Maybe you’re wondering if upgrading is even worth the risk.

As it turns out, the truth is simpler than you think.

You’re not choosing between one system or another. You’re choosing between managing around the mess or building a communication infrastructure that actually supports the flow of modern care delivery.

Luckily, the rise of cloud-based call center software means that a poor experience for patients, clinicians, and operators doesn’t have to be the status quo.

What call centers look like in most hospitals

In a study for Becker’s Hospital Review, Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC) phoned 20 hospitals, posing as family members seeking care for a father with prostate cancer.¹ The results were bleak. Callers were hung up on, told to “check the website,” or shuffled from one contact to another. Andrea Simon, the CEO of SAMC, wrote that they were “discouraged from ever going back to 90% of the hospitals.”

“Hospitals often treat their switchboards and their command centers as cost centers,” explains Duncan Harris, a Product Manager at PerfectServe. “It’s hard to drum up investment or get buy-in across the organization when it’s time to change.”

But it’s a mistake to limp along with a partially functional system, Duncan warns. Using outdated call center technology means that your hospital is dropping calls, missing transfers, putting patients on hold for far too long, and forcing people to spend inordinate amounts of time playing phone tag. Not a great look.

And it’s not just about making a poor impression on patients and other stakeholders. It also means that, in many cases, an eventual change will be forced rather than planned.

“Hospitals frequently wait until their legacy systems are fully end-of-life,” says Duncan. “They are falling over and crashing nightly, or there’s been some sort of critical issue that’s happened that is forcing a really urgent change to something that’s more reliable, scalable, and stable.”

That means too many hospitals end up shopping for a solution under pressure instead of taking time to do their research and choose a system that best supports patients and staff. When they finally take a good look at what else is on the market, they realize that “there’s a better way, a more strategic way to go about this, which is in a cloud hosting direction,” says Sean Collins, a VP at PerfectServe with over 20 years of experience in the operator console and mobile communications space.

Why should you replace your hospital switchboard when the status quo is familiar?

Hospital call centers are notoriously busy places. So it’s no surprise that you may not be rushing to rip and replace the solution your operators use to direct incoming phone traffic.

After all, switching platforms takes some effort. And the status quo may leave a lot to be desired … but it’s also the devil you know.

However, there are a number of valid reasons to consider making the change before it’s forced on you:

You’ll reduce patient call wait times. A modern switchboard can automate routine requests, prevent mis-transfers, and cut down on callbacks from workflows gone wrong.
You’ll dramatically cut the call load. Duncan estimates that AI-powered operations—which are being adopted rapidly—could divert up to 80% of call traffic away from live agents. For example, if a caller needs to be connected to a patient room or the gift shop, AI-enabled technology can handle that workflow completely.
You’ll have a more robust communications system. Sickness, traffic, weather, and power outages can prevent operators from working. A cloud-based switchboard can easily be accessed remotely, meaning operators can log in safely and securely from anywhere.
You’ll be able to integrate with clinical software. Legacy switchboards are often difficult to connect to other important hospital systems, so they operate in a bit of a silo. Modern software integrates tightly with EHRs, scheduling platforms, and secure messaging systems so information can flow instantly and securely.
You’ll make life easier for your operators. New switchboard platforms are full-featured but easy to learn, meaning staff don’t have to spend hours conquering unintuitive workflows.
You’ll have to upgrade eventually, either way. If your hospital is implementing cloud-based tech for insurance, patient scheduling, or billing, then at some point, you’re going to want those systems to integrate with your call center. If the upgrade is inevitable, why not take a more proactive approach?

What happens if you treat your call center as an investment, not a cost center?

Hospital call centers often get budgeted as a necessary and fixed expense. As a cost center, they’re something to maintain rather than invest in. That’s a real missed opportunity.

Your call center is often the first interaction your patients have with your facility. It may be the heart of the connection between providers and patients. Set up right, it should be a strategic advantage—a key hospital function that eases pain points and aids care coordination.

But what, exactly, are the hallmarks of a high-functioning hospital call center? It should have a switchboard platform that:

Helps operators facilitate clinical urgency
Uses advanced routing capabilities to connect patients, providers, and other callers with the right people instantly
Integrates with the clinical directory, EHR, and scheduling systems to give operators real-time connection and awareness

Here are just a few of the benefits you should expect from upgrading your call center tech:

A better patient experience

When you move your switchboard to the cloud, you can more easily integrate it with other important hospital systems. This isn’t just an IT thing—it can have a major impact on the patient experience.

Say a family member calls to talk to a patient. With a legacy system, it can be a headache to track the patient down, find the number for their room, and so on. With an operator console that integrates with your EHR, you’ll have that information right away.

For example, if that family member calls and asks to be connected to room 4E, a proper integration with the hospital’s ADT feed can show an operator if the patient has been transferred to 5N. It seems like a small thing, but being put on hold for 5 minutes while the operator tracks down a patient’s whereabouts is not an ideal experience.

Easier to recruit, train, and retain operators

If your call center has high turnover, you’re not alone. Mack Kelly, a Director at PerfectServe, says that the medical centers he talks to see a “30-50% annual turnover among agents.”

A cloud-based operator center widens your hiring pool since it doesn’t tie agents to a physical location. You can have operators who work from home or who handle calls for multiple locations, all without sacrificing the quality of their service.

This also comes with a risk-reducing benefit. If an emergent event—maybe there’s some rough inclement weather—knocks your hospital’s power (and servers) out, having remote agents means your call center will still be fully functioning.

Better tech also makes it easier to ramp up and retain agents. For new agents, an intuitive interface means getting up to speed takes less time. For more experienced agents, familiar features like keyboard shortcuts and other common workflows can be maintained, which allows them to stay productive without training. For everyone, a user-friendly platform that readily facilitates connections and doesn’t cause constant frustration makes it easier to retain agents in the long run.

Better operator experience

Clunky, 90s-style interfaces frustrate operators and make the job feel harder than it needs to be. On top of that, having to juggle multiple systems and screens creates cognitive overload, which can quickly lead to increased burnout and higher turnover.

“Operators should see everything on a single pane of glass,” says Duncan. “Everything operators need—secure messaging, call handling, the clinical directory, the notes, the patient census, the call scripts—can be seen at a glance.” They shouldn’t have to change context or open up multiple tabs to gather necessary information.

A universal search bar can also make a big impact. This functionality allows an operator to find any patient, doctor, nurse, or staff member with a quick search, and then click a button to route a call to that person. Because they aren’t toggling around to search for the info they need, this workflow can save up to 20% of the agent’s time.

More efficient operations

A modern switchboard doesn’t just save time for operators. Other daily operations can unfold much faster with improved communication.

Agent workflows, for example, can automatically route messages to the right provider and escalate to an on-call backup if the provider doesn’t promptly respond. This automated approach helps deliver messages to their appropriate destination while making sure time-sensitive communications don’t sit unread in someone’s inbox.

Easier audits

A cloud-based operator console also makes auditing and documentation far simpler. “It’s really hard to audit behavior if it’s not totally captured within your system,” explains Mack.

For a platform like this to be as effective and transparent as possible, every action inside the system needs to be recorded automatically so you have a complete trail for compliance reviews and quality checks.

That way, you don’t have to worry about people using workarounds you don’t know about, like jotting notes down on sticky pads or keeping separate call lists. Everything gets handled and tracked in one secure system.

It ain’t broke … but is it reliable?

Your old-school switchboard still works, but at what cost? Gambling with time, trust, and patient outcomes until something breaks isn’t an option.

Sticking with what you know might feel safer, but modernizing your hospital’s call center goes beyond the technical upgrade. It’s a commitment to reducing hold times and building reliable workflows that keep patients, providers, and operators connected without frustrating roadblocks and manual workarounds.

That’s why the best time to change isn’t after failure.

It’s now.

Curious to see what that looks like in action? See how a Midwest healthcare system upgraded its communications with a modern, cloud-based operator console.

How to Upgrade Your Healthcare Call Center

Sources

How to fix hospital call centers to improve the patient experience, boost revenue. Becker’s Hospital Review.

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