Central nurse triage program improves patient experience

Working with organizational leadership, EXL Health sought to overcome several existing challenges, including setting up a complex telecomm system, all within a work-from-home environment and suboptimal client infrastructure.

The challenge

A leading multi-specialty group practice treating two million patients annually was struggling to support their growing influx of patient calls and requests. Despite internal resources, the organization was unable to scale the continuing call volume increases, resulting in more than 30-minute hold times to speak with a nurse or scheduler and a 40% call-abandon rate.

The organization needed a rapid solution to address and preserve the rapidly declining patient experience. EXL Health partnered with the organization to provide an offshore call center solution for non-clinical shared services and central nurse triage services. Working with organizational leadership, EXL Health sought to overcome several existing challenges, including setting up a complex telecomm system, all within a work-from-home environment and suboptimal client infrastructure. In addition, EXL Health established an accelerated hiring and training timeline to help ensure a rapid go-live of services.

Human ingenuity

Leveraging advanced end-to-end utilization management services, EXL Health worked with the organization to develop a crossfunctional collaboration, leveraging internal subject matter experts to rapidly standup net-new capabilities in less than 90 days. Our strategic tactics included:

• Non-clinical/USRN profile to include direct patient telephonic and patient messaging encounters.
• Collaborative implementation that mitigated all risks identified with contracting and licensing during the initial program setup
• Developing go/no-go sign offs for each clinical decision making

Looking deeper, EXL Health developed several tactical initiatives to refine how patient success is implemented across the organization, including:

Clinical nurse triage average handle time reduction

Assisted nurses in call handling time and reduction variation between nurses and waves, with tactics that include:

• Smart phrase enhancement: Created standard smart phrases with call guide and documentation checklists to ensure complete documentation and flow for all common case types.
• Dual screen deployment: : Additional monitors were deployed to promote navigation efficiency and multi-tasking.
• Work from home real-time monitoring and adherence: Established ICBM monitoring to ensure flagging, call outs, and support is provided in real time.

Training and communication enhancement program

A customized hiring to training program was developed to ensure staff is equipped to deliver program needs. Tactics included:

• Revised hiring profile: EXL Health revised the organization’s hiring profile to include relative clinical and navigation experience and language baselining to assess communication proficiency.
• Soft skills up-skilling: Integrated soft skills training such as call control, empathy, and customer service to prepare staff for calls.
• Knowledge management: Completed knowledge/training materials for continuity of learning and usage of future batches (process maps, training materials, call recordings, update management).