In your healthcare practice, every phone call matters. Missed calls mean missed opportunities—for appointments, medical advice, or billing support. Yet, staffing shortages exacerbated by the pandemic have led to frustrated patients and lost opportunities for the practice.
Research from Envera Health shows the average call abandonment rate for healthcare is around 7%. For a practice receiving 2,000 calls daily, this could mean missing out on 140 calls. Such missed opportunities often lead to patients seeking care elsewhere. This is where outsourcing can make a significant difference.
How Can Your Practice Benefit from Outsourcing?
Outsourcing involves delegating business processes or tasks to third-party providers, enabling organizations to focus on core functions. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) entails contracting specific operations, like customer service or administrative tasks, to specialized firms. BPO companies offer efficiency and expertise, managing processes that may be burdensome or outside a healthcare practice’s primary area of expertise. By outsourcing non-clinical activities to a specialized BPO partner, your practice can reap numerous benefits.
1. Ensure 24/7 Availability
With a dedicated team, healthcare practices can offer round-the-clock support to patients, ensuring no call goes unanswered, regardless of the time or day. Such accessibility enhances patient satisfaction and loyalty. While your office staff may leave at 5 pm, qualified call center employees can continue providing answers and assistance to ensure a seamless patient experience.
2. Reduce Wait Times
Long hold times can deter patients from seeking the help they need. A dedicated team of healthcare agents helps distribute call volume, ensuring patients are promptly attended to. This swift response is crucial for patient satisfaction and alleviates stress on in-house staff. Outsourced staff serve as an extension of ongoing operations, enabling you to scale your operations with reduced risk.
3. Streamline Patient Portal Communications
Patient-doctor electronic communication has surged in recent years, with 69% of patients preferring providers who use secure emails. Over the course of a weekend, a doctor/nurse team must respond to several dozen requests, including scheduling and other non-clinical inquiries. With qualified BPO staff handling patient portal activity, physicians can focus on critical messages and in-person patient interactions at the practice.
4. Handling Prior Authorizations and Insurance Claims
Outsourcing prior authorizations and insurance claims simplifies complex processes requiring coding expertise, insurance knowledge, and regulatory compliance. Partnering with BPO companies enhances efficiency, reduces errors, and ensures timely payment. Global teams of healthcare experts help streamline prior authorizations, insurance verification, payment processing, and claims management.
5. Reduce Provider Burnout
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), over 50% of providers experience burnout symptoms, which is significantly higher than the general population. Administrative work and increased screen time managing electronic health records emerged as the primary stressors.
A recent McKinsey report similarly shows that physicians spend a significant portion of their day updating medical data, with almost half of their time spent on electronic health records and desk work.
Outsourcing administrative tasks allows doctors to concentrate on what they do best — caring for patients. With fewer administrative tasks on their plates, medical professionals can experience reduced burnout and improve patient outcomes.
6. Cost Reduction Through The Right BPO Partnership
Pitchbook’s “Healthcare Services Overview 2023” reported that reimbursement rates have failed to match the rising costs of operations in the past three years, causing margin compression for healthcare practices. To remain financially viable, healthcare practices must explore operational improvements. These include enhancing staffing efficiency and revenue cycle management.
Outsourcing non-clinical activities to a BPO partner enables healthcare practices to achieve greater operational efficiency. BPO services lead to significant cost reductions by streamlining operations, reducing labor and operational costs, and improving efficiency and revenue cycle management. This strategic alignment allows your practice to focus on core healthcare delivery while mitigating financial pressures through improved operational efficiencies and cost management.
Choosing the Right BPO Partner
The ideal BPO partner should offer:
- Clear communication and alignment with your practice’s goals and standards.
- A deep understanding of healthcare operations and adherence to healthcare data protection standards and certifications.
By partnering with OP360, you can enhance service quality across the entire patient journey. Contact us today to learn more about our healthcare services. Here, there’s a better way to elevate your patient experience.