Healthcare Services

The Healthcare industry has been overwhelmed with the recent realities of the Covid-19 pandemic and chronic underfunding of various healthcare services over the last couple of years. Add to this, the reality of increasing shortages of Doctors, Nurses, Personal Care Workers and Administrative staff that are no longer able to work under these conditions and/or are increasingly concerned about additional crises.

A contact center can become the main point of contact for both inbound and outbound ‘as needed’ services and ongoing patient support. Healthcare providers and healthcare related organizations know that keeping patients engaged and providing them a timely and empathetic experience is of primary importance to keeping patient fears in check, while helping everyone have a better overall healthcare experience.

Proactive versus Reactive Patient (and Caregiver) Engagement

At the same time, Healthcare Systems are increasingly under pressure from non-traditional healthcare providers who apply innovation and technology to improve how people take care of their health. Flexibility is now key, and traditional Healthcare Systems are typically more limited in their ability to adapt due to their legacy systems, proprietary technologies, lack of modern APIs, and increasingly, personal privacy and healthcare information security concerns.

As more flexible technologies are coupled with traditional core systems, innovation can more easily be driven across the institution’s infrastructure. Leveraging those legacy core systems while complementing them with innovative and more adaptable digital capabilities, such as SMS alerts and voice or email notifications, chat, and video, will empower healthcare organizations to keep pace with changing patient expectations.

Make Patient and Caregiver Engagement a Priority

The reality is that Healthcare is never static, and the flexibility provided by a fully integrated approach has now become an absolute requirement. Digital technologies can be added to address any specific shortcomings in their existing capabilities, while providing both a much better experience to both the patient and the care giver. A patient may now choose to engage with a healthcare provider while at home and be provided with some initial guidance to deal with the situation via a call, text message or video, while deferring the need to go to the Hospital. Or they may be provided some help while on a call, while a message is triggered for an ambulance or emergency services support. Patients have come to expect to be able to use whatever communications channel best meets their needs at any moment in time in their daily lives, the expectation is that they should be able to do so when taking care of their health as well.