Patient communication means many things—making appointments, answering questions about services, handling emergencies, and managing telemedicine visits. These tasks often need to happen all day and night, especially when patients need quick responses after hours. When communication stops working well, patients get unhappy, appointments are missed, and healthcare quality drops.
Since 2009, American Health Connection has helped healthcare groups by handling patient communication. Their Patient Communication Management® service takes care of appointment scheduling, extra call answering, and support after hours. When the pandemic caused more appointment delays and questions, more healthcare providers needed these services. AHC expanded its call centers to help with important appointment bookings and telemedicine scheduling. This gave patients and providers smooth ways to talk across the country.
To make sure patient communication never stops, especially when call volumes are high or problems happen, cloud-based fail-safe technology is very important. Fail-safe means if one part fails, the system keeps working without interruption. For example, if phone lines in an office go down, calls can automatically move through the cloud to remote workers so service does not stop.
AHC uses this cloud setup to give healthcare clients reliable, 24/7 service. By keeping their system in the cloud, AHC makes sure patient calls get to live agents anytime. This is very important for doctors since delays in scheduling or sharing information can affect patient care and results.
Cloud systems also let services grow easily. During the pandemic, providers had many patients waiting and lots of calls coming in. Cloud platforms helped AHC add more remote agents fast to handle these overflow calls without needing new phone lines or hardware. This flexibility is key for healthcare providers who have changing call volumes and need to act quickly.
During the pandemic, healthcare groups faced a problem: how to keep call center workers safe while keeping patient communication going. Physical call centers could expose workers to health risks, especially since they handled many calls every day. Using cloud technology and managing workers remotely became a solution.
AHC showed new ways to manage workers by offering its Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) phone system free to clients with extra calls. This let healthcare agents log in from home, so work could go on and workers could stay safe. Over 900 workers in the U.S. support healthcare groups using this method now. AHC plans to hire hundreds more remote workers as healthcare needs rise after the pandemic.
This way helps cut costs and run operations smoothly. By outsourcing extra and after-hours calls and using remote workers, medical offices can have fewer large in-house call centers. Outsourcing helps offices use their resources well and keep good patient communication without hiring more full-time staff.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and workflow automation in healthcare communication makes work faster and more accurate. AI handles simple tasks like confirming appointments, checking symptoms, or giving basic info. This lets human agents focus on harder calls. This also shortens wait times and helps patients.
Companies like AHC add AI tools into their Patient Communication Management® service. These tools handle scheduling, process telemedicine requests, confirm appointments with messages, and send reminders. AI also helps direct calls to the right specialist fast, cutting down hold times.
Workflow automation works with AI by making registration and patient data collection easier. Automated systems make sure patients give needed info before the visit. This cuts down paperwork for staff and reduces mistakes. These technologies help patients and improve staff by allowing them to focus more on clinical care.
Adirondack Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery in Albany, New York uses AHC’s outsourced communication. Betsy Miller, who handles finance and communications there, says using an outside call center keeps workers safe and helps patients get info fast. This shows how cloud technology and outsourcing solve real problems healthcare providers face.
AHC CEO Yuriy Kotlyar says their mission started over ten years ago when they saw that services like these would be needed. He notes demand is still very high because of pandemic patient backlogs and that they plan to hire hundreds more remote workers to keep up with growing communication needs.
Healthcare communication will probably get busier as medical systems catch up on postponed care and more patients seek help. Reliable cloud technology and scalable remote work solutions will stay important to keep services running well. Providers should team up with experienced companies that offer full communication systems, AI tools, and patient engagement services for current healthcare needs.
Using cloud-based fail-safe communication helps healthcare groups in the U.S. keep patient contact steady, use staff better, and follow healthcare rules. This plan helps medical offices, hospitals, and clinics handle today’s challenges and get ready for more patient communication in the future.
AHC offers full outsourcing of patient communication, including central scheduling, overflow, and after-hours assistance through its Patient Communication Management® service, streamlining patient engagement and improving scheduling and registration workflows for healthcare organizations.
Demand increased due to non-essential service curtailments and a surge in patients seeking information, leading to scheduling challenges and increased need for telemedicine appointment scheduling and overflow call management.
AHC employs fail-safe cloud-based systems to provide reliable 24/7 service, allowing remote work and continuous operation without interruptions, ensuring patient communication remains seamless.
AHC currently has over 900 U.S.-based employees serving medical institutions nationwide, including plans to hire hundreds more remote workers to meet growing service demands.
Outsourcing helps healthcare providers manage scheduling workloads efficiently, keeps employees safe by enabling remote work, maximizes resource utilization, reduces expenses, and enhances care coordination to lower hospital readmissions.
AHC provides its call center telephone system (ACD) free to overflow clients, allowing healthcare agents to work from home and ensuring uninterrupted service during spikes in call volumes.
It is a suite of customized, cost-effective services designed to integrate patient communication outsourcing with the evolving needs of the healthcare industry, improving both patient and physician satisfaction.
Clients like Adirondack Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery report AHC’s services as effective and efficient in keeping employees safe while providing patients with necessary information, enhancing overall practice operations.
AHC anticipates handling backlogs of patients post-pandemic and continues to develop scalable remote workforce solutions and technology innovations to meet increasing demand in modern healthcare environments.
By streamlining scheduling, registration, and care coordination through specialized outsourced services, AHC facilitates better follow-up and timely patient engagement, decreasing the likelihood of hospital re-admissions.
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