In 2023, customer experiences are more important than ever—and that includes healthcare experiences.

However, many healthcare organizations aren’t paying ample attention to the patient experience—or to what modern patients want. As a result, healthcare organizations who do pay attention to this have a lot to gain.

A good experience begins with the patient flow, the ease of access, the scheduling, the communications…

Sue Schade, principal at a health IT advisory firm, in the Harvard Business Review

Omnichannel support is just one way that modern BPO call centers can help create these experiences. With omnichannel, patients get a straightforward healthcare experience that flows effortlessly from appointment making to in-person experiences to post-appointment follow-ups and makes scheduling, access and communications effortless for the patient and seamlessly integrated.

[Consumers] yearn for simplicity. Customers don’t care how a hospital or physician practice is organized internally. The need to hand off information between departments, units, or processes doesn’t matter to them. They just want the experience to be seamless and efficient.

David Betts, principal and leader for Customer and Digital Transformation for Health Care Providers

With more patient data and digital networks than ever, organizing these seamless experiences internally can be nearly impossible. This is one reason why more and more healthcare and consumer organizations are turning to modern BPO call centers to provide omnichannel support. More than just a call center, omnichannel support integrates every customer touchpoint—from phone calls to emails, patient portals and web interactions to in-person visits—to create seamless journeys for the customer and ensure every agent or admin has the full picture of each patient’s experience.

Doing so not only improves your customer service—it transforms your patient experiences.

When used appropriately, automation, AI, RPA, and other modern automation tools can have a host of benefits for healthcare organizations, including:

• improving efficiency and productivity
• reducing costs and improving cost-effectiveness
• reducing or eliminating manual work
• improving accuracy
• strengthening job satisfaction

All of this can be achieved without losing a human touch! Instead, automation can reduce the amount of time and effort from human agents spent on manual, repetitive processes, freeing up both internal and external teams to focus their efforts on what needs a uniquely human impact.

For example, at ROI CX Solutions, we focus on providing best-in-class customer support and using modern technology and available automation to give our agents more time to focus on human connection. Not only does this build stronger customer relationships, it also helps strengthen business processes.

Many commonly-outsourced business processes—such as data entry, QA processes and so on—can make use of modern technology to help solve age-old problems and get results faster. Modern BPO call centers make use of these tools and technologies to help provide faster, more efficient and cost-effective results for your business.

Modern BPO centers know how to make use of your internal and general data to deliver data-driven analytics, business strategy and results. Whether it’s for improving patient experiences, speeding up patient services, reducing healthcare costs, improving efficiency or some other usage, data analytics are a must across almost all services included in modern BPO.

And this is especially true for healthcare.

Data in healthcare “represents a huge potential for the transformation of healthcare: improvement of patients’ results, prediction of outbreaks of epidemics, valuable insights, avoidance of preventable diseases, reduction of the cost of healthcare delivery and improvement of the quality of life in general.”

National Library of Medicine

With more advanced automation and data analytics software, businesses—including healthcare organizations—have access to better business intelligence and the ability to create data-driven transformation that improves patient outcomes and internal processes.

However, more data available doesn’t always make it easier to analyze or utilize the results from this data. The same study noted that the “main challenges are connected with issues of: data structure, … security, … data standardization, … storage and transfers…, data governance, [and] lack of appropriate analytical skills and problems with Real-Time analytics.”

Modern BPO centers reduce the risks and challenges of healthcare data and data analytics by providing:

• transparent and aggregated data dashboards for internal teams to make sense of data
• strong emphasis on data security and privacy, especially for HIPAA-compliant BPO providers
• implementation and standardization of technologies to integrate data with EMR, EHR and other healthcare systems
• cloud-based storage for data and other records that allow healthcare organizations to share

Working with a modern BPO center gives you access to experts on data analytics, data storage and security and IT that can provide all of the above benefits while minimizing risks—allowing you to take advantage of data to improve patient experiences and outcomes.

Another benefit modern call centers take advantage of is using the latest technology to reduce reliance on physical operations—and expensive overhead.

Consider the benefit of remote work, as an example. When it comes to healthcare organizations, most work can’t be done remotely. With the exception of some telehealth options, most healthcare needs to happen in-person. However, when it comes to administrative, clerical, or customer service operations, many of these functions can happen remotely.

A modern BPO call center may offer the option of using a hybrid team—with some agents working from a physical call center office while others work remotely using cloud software and systems.

With hybrid teams, you can also employ agents who are living in the US for some tasks, while employing some agents outside of the US, taking advantage of lower cost-of-living areas to reduce expenses. In addition, hybrid teams are generally more affordable due to lower overhead costs for remote agents. What’s more—using remote or hybrid teams allows you to take advantage of multiple time zones to offer round-the-clock service more efficiently.

Similarly, modern BPO centers take advantage of the many benefits of cloud computing, such as:

• increased data storage and security
• reduced data storage cost
• improved efficiency
• more scalability and ability to outsource more operations
• streamlining essential operations

While many EMR and EHR systems already use cloud computing and cloud storage for data, and although the healthcare cloud computing market is growing, many healthcare leaders are still hesitant to take full advantage of the benefits cloud computing offers. However, working with modern BPO centers allows healthcare organizations to reduce risk while taking advantage of the benefits of cloud-based services.

Although the global healthcare cloud computing market has an annualized growth rate of 11.6%, more than 69% of healthcare leaders said the “hospital they worked at did not have a plan for moving existing data centers to the cloud.”

With all the benefits of cloud computing—and the increasing speed of adaptation and technological development—hospitals and other healthcare organizations who don’t have cloud computing implementation and migration plans risk getting left behind. Modern BPO centers can not only help you implement, manage and optimize your cloud-based services and platforms, they can also help de-risk them.

For example, cloud-based services for healthcare usage need to have seriously limited downtime, as extended downtime can be serious when it comes to healthcare records or monitoring. Modern BPO centers will have options for cloud-based services that are consistently reliable for healthcare organizations, or can help you design a hybrid model of both in-house and cloud data storage that can mitigate risk.

As discussed above, employee turnover and retention in the healthcare industry is struggling due to high levels of burnout, decreased employee satisfaction and a myriad of other factors. And with the cost of turnover and hiring being so high, healthcare organizations are right to do everything they can to reduce this burnout and turnover.

One way to do so?

Modern BPO outsourcing can offer more effective and efficient hiring processes that benefit healthcare organizations. For example, outsourcing some of your hiring to a BPO partner can:

• reduce internal workloads related to hiring, onboarding or recruiting new employees
• reduce the cost of hiring
• speed up recruitment and hiring timelines
• reduce the number of internal hiring staff needed
• improve hiring outcomes and placements

With ROI CX Solutions, we can hire CMAs, RNs, NPs, PAs, pharmacy techs and more—streamlining and speeding up the hiring process while also reducing the burden on internal teams. Our team manages recruitment, hiring and placement, ensuring you get high-quality staff that meets your needs and fits with your internal teams, and reducing your reliance on expensive travel nurses to fill gaps.

Although medical claims and billing are a commonly outsourced service for healthcare BPO, modern BPO call centers handle this differently.

With best-in-class technology, personable and professional agents, and top-notch support and privacy practices, modern BPO call centers, like ROI CX Solutions, will never drop an appointment—or a customer.

For teams like ours, your customers aren’t just another data—they’re individuals who deserve personalized service, which is exactly what our team and other modern BPOs deliver. And sometimes having a neutral, professional third-party can be helpful. For example, our team allows you to streamline payment collections—speeding up things for your internal team while providing patients with empathetic, friendly service.

Another commonly outsourced task is medical claims and record requests—as healthcare organizations continue to merge and migrate online, claims and record requests are growing in number. As a result, healthcare organizations need to find a way to process these more effectively. Modern BPO centers can provide more consistent, reliable records and claims processing services, ensure HIPAA compliance and improve patient satisfaction. Even better—internal staff are relieved from the repetitive administrative burden, saving you time and money.