How to Improve Call Workflows

Background

Hopewell Health provides primary, behavioral, psychiatric, and dentistry care to thousands of patients across Ohio. After nearly two decades using traditional answering services, Chief Operations Officer Lisa Poling and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Douglas Carr recognized the limitations of live services and started looking for a tech-enabled solution that could deliver more efficient call workflows.

Challenge

When their most recent service provider dissolved, Hopewell Health started having some understandable issues with the traditional answering process: Calls went to a live operator, who would then alert a clinician by call or text. The clinician would return the operator’s call for patient details, then manually note the patient’s name, birthdate, and phone number for callback.

This workflow was especially problematic due to Hopewell Health’s status as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), which requires clinicians to document all patient calls. Using scrap notes made tracking calls and patient information a real challenge.

Billing added more issues—Hopewell Health was charged for each call, including during lunch and after hours, leading to unpredictable costs that fluctuated with call volume. The combination of call tracking delays, documentation difficulties, and variable pricing ultimately drove the need for a new solution.

Solution and Results

Hopewell Health heard from other Ohio health systems that PerfctServe’s medical answering service, known as Practice Communication, was a good vehicle for improving communication workflows at their clinics. They decided to implement PerfectServe across most of their primary care and dentistry locations statewide.

Within just eight weeks of expressing interest, Hopewell Health had fully implemented PerfectServe. Throughout and following the implementation process, all users received direct support to enhance their experience with the service.

Improved Call Management Process

PerfectServe replaced Hopewell Health’s live answering service with one app (accessible on desktop and mobile device) that centralized call management. When an on-call clinician receives a call, they now get a HIPAA-compliant message with patient details—name, birthdate, and reason for calling—and can return the call with one click. Completed calls are securely stored and filed to meet FQHC requirements.

A key feature is PerfectServe’s Dynamic Intelligent Routing®, which directs calls to the right person based on urgency. Non-urgent calls are held for business hours, while urgent ones go to the on-call clinician, escalating to the next clinician if unanswered. Customizable notifications start with a push notification, then a text, and finally a call if needed.

“[The message] moves through, in a timely manner, in a way that we just could have never assured with the human operator element being responsible for [the process],” said Dr. Carr. “The technology sets the process in motion, and it even moves through the process to the point where, if the person trying to be reached doesn’t get reached in a timely manner, there’s a backup process that moves [the message] to someone else to ensure the problem is getting addressed in a timely manner.”

HIPAA-Compliant Call Management

Because Hopewell Health must properly document patient calls, clinicians used to track and document calls by hand. They often had to call operators back to fill in any missing information.

Thanks to PerfectServe, documentation is streamlined—no more misplaced notes or missing details.

“You don’t have to look for a piece of paper or call back for a refresher. It’s all in the app—closed loop.”

—Dr. Douglas Carr | Chief Medical Officer

Now, call details are securely stored in a HIPAA-compliant message chain, allowing clinicians to easily access and file information to satisfy FQHC requirements.

Clinician Satisfaction

Clinicians at Hopewell Health are much happier with the call management process using PerfectServe. The app’s ease of use on personal devices streamlines workflows, and it also protects their personal contact information.

Clinicians have also voiced their appreciation for PerfectServe’s customizable notification settings, which allow them to choose exactly how they want to be contacted.

Fair Pricing

Inconsistent pricing is a common experience with the live answering service model. PerfectServe’s consistent pricing model offers transparent, predictable costs, allowing healthcare organizations to better manage expenses.

“We were concerned that the cost of PerfectServe would be out of our range as a non-profit organization, but we found the pricing very comparable to our prior service. Most importantly, the value of PerfectServe is far superior to what we’ve experienced in the past.”

—Lisa Polling | Chief Operations Officer

Enhanced Insight Into Call Workflows

PerfectServe has improved call handling and transparency, allowing Dr. Carr and Lisa to identify areas for process improvement.

“With previous services, we could see that messages were taken, and maybe at what point it was initiated,” said Dr. Carr. “Now, we can see at which point people are being notified and if processes are working, and we’ve really been able to troubleshoot through that.”

Because Lisa oversees operations at Hopewell Health, she gets value from the data and insights PerfectServe provides. By improving their call management process, Lisa can see details about the types of calls coming in after hours and over weekends and holidays.

“I think there’s real value in the opportunity to understand the [back-end patient call data] from an operational standpoint”, said Polling.

Conclusion

After-hours, holiday, and weekend call management is crucial to delivering high-quality patient care for any health system. Live answering services, however, aren’t the solution for everyone, and they certainly didn’t meet Hopewell Health’s needs.

As an FQHC, their unique call management needs require a much more efficient call documentation and tracking process. PerfectServe’s automated answering service now handles this workflow with ease, from the time a call is placed to the moment a clinician connects with their patient, even giving better insight into potential process improvements. That’s the power of a modern answering service built on intelligent routing!