BPO GUIDE FOR HEALTHCARE
BPO Call Center Guide for Healthcare: What Modern Call Centers Do Differently
Modern BPO paves the way for healthcare organizations to enact digital transformation, improve patient experiences and create cost-effective care.
As the BPO industry grows, will healthcare organizations take advantage of it?
Healthcare is no stranger to BPO, or Business Process Outsourcing—but modern BPO offers unique benefits and services for healthcare organizations. As the healthcare industry undergoes rapid changes since the Covid-19 pandemic, modern BPO call centers offer three key distinctions that can provide support for adaptation and digital transformation:
- Modern BPO centers leverage world-class tech like automation, AI and process optimization to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
- Modern BPO centers provide expanded project scopes and services to achieve better, more efficient and wide-reaching results.
- Modern BPO centers create increased operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness that drive results in every area of healthcare, from employee retention to patient experiences.
But how do these key distinctions aid healthcare organizations? And why is modern BPO so beneficial for modern challenges to healthcare?
In this guide, our team of BPO experts at ROI CX Solutions dive into why modern BPO is so valuable for the challenges today’s healthcare organizations face, and what to look for in a BPO provider.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Why BPO is growing in the healthcare industry
- The Benefits of BPO for Modern Healthcare
- What modern BPO call centers do differently
- Create seamless experiences through omnichannel support
- Prioritize increased automation & AI
- Deliver data-driven analytics
- Take advantage of remote work
- Optimize healthcare organizations for cloud computing
- Strengthen hiring & recruitment capabilities
- Effectively manage medical claims & billing
- Beyond data entry—EMR / EHR management
- Is Business Process Outsourcing right for you?
Why BPO is growing in the healthcare industry
The numbers don’t lie—the BPO industry is growing, and even more significantly for healthcare outsourcing:
The BPO industry is projected to reach $0.45 trillion dollars by 2027, for a CAGR of 6.69%.
However, the global market for healthcare BPO is projected to reach $441.8 billion by 2026, a CAGR of 9.3%.
are planning to increase budgets for outsourcing—including managed and operational services—from 2022.
But there’s always more to the story than just numbers—more importantly, there’s the story behind the numbers, that is:
Why exactly is BPO growing so rapidly in the healthcare industry?
The healthcare industry is at a crossroads. With the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising burnout and employee turnover across all clinical positions, the rising costs of healthcare and shrinking healthcare organization budgets, and the increasing pressure to deliver higher-quality healthcare with fewer resources, rising new technologies and more, healthcare organizations are scrambling to find ways to adapt, improve and meet customer needs.
Modern BPO provides ample opportunities for healthcare organizations to adapt to and meet customer needs. Not only does BPO allow for cost reduction, but it can also improve efficiency and productivity, reduce internal workloads, support necessary functions with additional resources and more.
The Benefits of BPO for Modern Healthcare
Business process outsourcing has the potential to provide a range of benefits for modern healthcare services, including:
- reducing internal workloads and relieving burnout
- reducing costs
- allowing healthcare organizations to reduce employee turnover
- improving internal alignment and focus on core tasks and clinical work
- implementing and manage new technologies
- increasing data security and patient privacy
- providing stronger customer service and improve patient experiences, both in and out of the clinical setting
Behind each of these benefits is a major challenge healthcare organizations are facing right now. Take the first as an example—reducing internal workloads and relieving burnout. Recent studies have shown that all healthcare workers—from clinical staff to non-clinical staff like admins, lab techs and even housekeeping staff—are experiencing high levels of burnout.
56%
OF NURSES
reported high levels of burnout in 2022
47%
OF PHYSICIANS
reported high levels of burnout
45%
NON-CLINICAL STAFF
reported high levels of burnout
The study cited increased workload as one of the major contributors to burnout—and as increased workloads lead to burnout, increased burnout leads to more employee turnover. In 2022, the national turnover rate for RNs was 22%. And replacing an RN isn’t easy—
$52,350
AVERAGE COST
The average cost of each RN turnover is $52,350, up from $46,100 in 2021.
$380,600
ANNUAL COST
Each percentage increase in RN turnover will cost the average healthcare organization $380,600 annually.
61-120
DAYS OF RECRUITMENT
Typical RN recruitment ranges from 61-120 days, meaning it takes the average healthcare organization over two months to fill each vacant RN position.
And this is all just from one position—not counting employee turnover from physicians, lab technicians, IT managers, administrative roles and so on.
You can see why the benefit of business process outsourcing in these areas is so valuable. With BPO, not only can you reduce internal workloads—thus reducing burnout and employee turnover—but you can also speed hiring times by outsourcing some HR functions, reduce costs and improve internal focus and alignment to allow core staff to focus on their best work.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. However, not all BPO centers are created equally—and for best results, healthcare organizations should be looking for a modern BPO center who knows how to take advantage of new changes in the market and new technologies to get results.
Ready to take the next step?
What modern BPO call centers do differently
When you imagine BPO, you likely imagine a very traditional version of business process outsourcing that involves rows of agents answering calls, processing billing claims or doing manual data entry.
While this still can be the case, and these services are still offered, modern BPO call centers operate more efficiently and productively. With an expanded scope of services and results, improved efficiency through modern tools and technology, and a greater range of security and privacy functions, BPO is more valuable and effective than ever.
For example, modern BPO centers use automation and AI capabilities to improve efficiency and accuracy of data entry tasks. Other modern BPO centers, like ROI CX Solutions, can offer expanded services, such as integration with EMR systems to streamline and improve patient experiences or hiring and staffing services for both clinical and non-clinical positions.
So, what should you look for in a modern BPO call center, and how do these key differences support your business growth and goals?
Here are eight things modern BPO call centers do differently.
Create seamless experiences through omnichannel support
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…
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.
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.
Prioritize increased automation & AI
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.
Deliver data-driven analytics
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.”
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.
Take advantage of remote work
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.
Optimize healthcare organizations for cloud computing
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.
Strengthen hiring & recruitment capabilities
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.
Effectively manage medical claims and billing
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.
Beyond data entry—EMR/EHR management
Finally, data entry has always been a big part of BPO outsourcing—but modern BPO centers go beyond data entry and into EMR/EHR management, integration and optimization, managing your modern patient data from end-to-end.
Outsourcing your EMR management reduces manual labor and non-clinical tasks for clinicians, making them more productive and reducing their administrative burden. However, outsourcing your EMR management also makes it easier to integrate EMR with other EHR systems—increasing cost-effectiveness, efficiency and modernization of your healthcare records. Doing so improves patient experiences, access and outcomes, therefore improving the healthcare experience for all parties: patients, staff, and your organization as a whole.
While each BPO center will handle this somewhat differently, ROI CX Solutions has a variety of data management and EMR management services we offer.
Our team’s versatile experience with EMR systems—we’ve worked with Cerner, Epic and Athena and others—means a quicker ramp-up time and no additional training needed from your team to easily integrate with your systems. We work out of and integrate your EMR with our customer systems, allowing us to deliver streamlined experiences and improve patient care and experiences, by connecting patient data at every touchpoint. And with a team who already knows your systems, we can quickly train agents and provide optimization for your processes to make data entry and customer service more efficient.
Is Business Process Outsourcing Right for You?
So, is business process outsourcing right for your healthcare organization?
Modern BPO call centers know how to leverage automation and AI and offer expanded services to benefit your organization—from reducing costs, increasing efficiency, reducing internal workload and fighting burnout, aiding technological transitions and more.
In addition, modern BPO centers can reduce many of the risks associated with traditional BPO. According to a recent report, healthcare organizations commonly report service quality and concerns about control as two of the major risk factors they see associated with BPO.
If control is a concern for your organization, consider nearshoring BPO. Nearshoring allows you to outsource to a nearby—yet still cost-effective—outsourcing destination, such as Mexico, that allows for greater control, more day-to-day involvement, and more effective collaboration and communication. In addition, modern BPO centers like ROI CX Solutions focus on service to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint—and know how to get results..
At ROI CX Solutions, we’ve helped healthcare clients:
95%
Service Level Average
maintain a 95% service level average on their claims and benefit line
$1M
Revenue
grow revenue by $1M per month
EMR & CX
Call Software
integrate EMR and CX call software to increase Ease of Contact Rate by 14% and Ease of Scheduling Rate by 16%
Want to see how we can help get these results and more for your healthcare organization?
Connect with an expert from ROI CX Solutions today and we’ll show you how modern BPO can help your unique healthcare organization reduce costs, improve patient experiences and outcomes, and drive results.
About ROI CX Solutions
ROI CX Solutions drives customer satisfaction and business success through outsourced customer service and global sourcing management. With decades of experience across our expert team, ROI CX Solutions has innovated results-driven performance and improved customer experiences for brands across a variety of industries. With flexible, customizable solutions, state-of-the-art technology, and world-class customer service representatives, we deliver results for your business—and your customers.