At many health centers, plain old telephone service (POTS) is still one of the primary forms of interaction with patients outside of office visits. In a recent interview with Tracy Causey, CEO of Capital Area Health Network, he shares how their three sites, servicing about 17,000 patients, used AI to streamline patient interactions.
When all calls were handled manually, results were so bad that they replaced their phone system several times, with no improvements. Many patients weren’t answering their phones, calls were missed or dropped, others would crave contact and keep staff on the phone for a long time. Average wait times were 30-40 minutes, and one long wait led to a negative online review which was problematic for the organization.
As an eClinicalWorks site, the health system decided to try healow Genie to handle calls. It was a simple integration, and worked “out of the box.” The approximate 400 calls they get each day are now spread out, as patients take advantage of 24/7 availability. And when a call does require staff, healow Genie gets a live agent person on the phone within a minute and 20 seconds.
More importantly healow Genie handles about 80% of all calls with no staff interaction, answering the phone within 14 seconds versus previous wait times which regularly reached 30-45 minutes.
Although some staff were worried that the AI system would replace them, they found instead that staff had more time for important tasks outside of answering the phones. When healow Genie does connect a patient to a live agent, the agent can handle a call faster because healow Genie shares basic information with the live agent about the issue before connecting the patient.
As for the patients, they took a little while to accept the system. Causey says it was actually less popular among young patients as well as the elderly. But he explained to patients that all institutions are moving in the direction of AI-handled calls.
healow Genie helps Capital Area Health Network with appointment scheduling, medication refills, and simply providing information about what services the system provides or what a patient’s own treatment plan is. Causey advises managers who install such systems that the staff need education in order to accept the system.
Check out our interview with Capital Area Health Network to learn more about their implementation of the healow Genie call center agent.
Learn more about Capital Area Health Network: https://cahealthnet.org/
Learn more about eCW: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/
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