Virtually Consolidating Multiple and Multi-State Hospital Call Centers

According to a survey published by the American Hospital Association (AHA) in 2016, there are 3,231 community hospitals in the United States that are a part of a larger hospital system.

The AHA defines these enterprises as either a multi-hospital system where two or more hospitals are owned, leased, sponsored, or contract managed by a central organization; or a single, freestanding hospital that includes membership of three or more, and at least 25 percent, of non-hospital healthcare organizations.

These sizable healthcare systems are often the result of mergers. Hospitals announced a total of 115 merger and acquisition transactions in 2017 alone and this trend is on the rise.

No matter how large the hospital enterprise, call centers are often the first point of contact when a patient or prospective patient contacts a healthcare organization. It’s essential that callers have a helpful, positive interaction with the operators they speak with because medical call center representatives often serve as the face of a health system.

Communications within a hospital system are incredibly complex, however, callers should have a seamless communication experience with their provider even if they are calling a large hospital enterprise with various campuses or locations across multiple states.

Using a Virtual Server Brings Multiple Hospital Call Centers Together

Healthcare systems with multiple hospitals, clinics, and call centers can run on a single virtual server located anywhere in the country, even if they all use different PBX telephone systems, to function together seamlessly.

Call centers can also grow without adding additional hardware which saves time and money because less equipment needs to be maintained. To streamline call flows, hospital enterprises can combine and scale their communication systems virtually to take advantage of running their call centers in a virtual server environment or in the cloud.

Other benefits of running call centers on a virtual server include:

• Ability to route calls to another center in the event of an emergency
• Employing home-based agents
• Offering longer operating hours by taking advantage of call centers or agents located in different time zones
• Ability to handle more calls during peak hours by overflowing calls to other centers during their non-peak times
• Tap other labor markets such as retired nurses, students, or a lower-cost workforce and hire people who are located outside of expensive city areas with high compensation rates

Web-Based Communication During a Pandemic

Web-based communication has proven to be invaluable during the current COVID-19 crisis.  Virtual servers enable cloud communications because they can be located anywhere in the country, even if they all use different PBX telephone systems, to function together seamlessly.