Texas Health Resources offers the following tips to efficiently contact patients using telephone and internet technology:
Use of progressive-dialer technology. Texas Health Resources uses progressive-dialer technology to achieve a high level of patient contacts, leading to a high rate of preregistrations, insurance verification and preservice collections.
“Previously, it could take three or four calls to get a patient to call us back and preregister,” says Patti Consolver, senior director of patient access in system services at Texas Health Resources .
By contrast, the progressive dialer lets staff members spend all their time talking to patients who are available for a conversation rather than listening to voice-message recordings from patients who are not available. Studies suggest that progressive-dialer technology reduces staff idle time from 33% to 5%.
When services are scheduled, the “automated attended dialer” calls patients within one day. Calls are placed between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. If patients answer their phones, calls are connected to available representatives to complete the preregistration.
To ensure timely communication with patients, an “automatic unattended dialer” is also utilized which allows for a recorded message to be left reminding the patient that they may preregister by calling the patient access center at their convenience or by preregistering through the patient portal. Consolver stated that the key to pre-registering patients is to provide them with multi-channel communication options.
The unattended dialer also makes calls on the weekend, reminding patients that they need to preregister before their appointments. “On a Sunday afternoon, we might call out with a message like, ‘Hope you have a great weekend, and please give us a call on Monday to preregister, or go online at your convenience to preregister,’” Consolver says.
A key to success with the progressive-dialing technology: Use the right tone. “I try to think about talking to my own relatives about health care,” says Melanie Ann Thorsen, an application specialist at Texas Health Resources and the voice on all the outgoing messages. “I want to be personable but, at the same time, convey that this is a serious matter that needs to get done.”
Early on, Consolver’s team determined that patients can be turned off by robocalls, so they decided to make the calls more palatable. Messages are customized as much as possible, which means Thorsen does not start a greeting with “This is Texas Health Resources.”
“They want it to be drilled down as much as possible, so I’ll name the specific hospital or facility, ‘Texas Health-Dallas’ or ‘Texas Health-Fort Worth’ and so on,” Thorsen says.
Outbound messages are timed to give patients reminders about the need to preregister without annoying them with too many calls.
“If they are scheduled four months out, for example, they will probably get two calls a month and, when the appointment gets closer, we’ll start calling more often,” Thorsen says.
Offer a self-service portal. Although Texas Health has offered preregistration via a portal for 15 years, it has not gained traction with most patients, Consolver says. Fewer than 2% of the 25,000 preregistrations each month occur online.
“We’re not sure why that number doesn’t increase,” she says. “Focus groups tell us that patients want to preregister online and, they want to live in the digital world, but it seems like they want that human contact too.”
She has received anecdotal feedback that even patients who preregister online want to speak with someone to reassure them the process is complete, and their financial responsibilities have been met.
See related article: How Texas Health Resources improved patient access and preservice revenue
