5 Signs It’s Time to Retire Your Legacy Patient Communication System
You’ve had your legacy patient communications system for years, and you and your staff are comfortable with it. On the surface, it seems to be getting the job done. But is it driving patient satisfaction and value?
In today’s healthcare practice, data, ROI, and patient satisfaction constitute the trifecta of success. However, studies have found that more than 93 percent of healthcare call centers are managed in-house, are not equipped with omnichannel patient access, and provide limited visibility and data insights to drive business value. Older systems simply cannot deliver the level of service your patients expect or the insights you need, which can cost you time and money.
Here are some of the signals your legacy system may be telling you it’s time to part ways.
Adding New Locations and Providers Is Growing More Difficult
As your practice develops, you may face the challenge of providing communications access across multiple locations. With legacy systems, this translates into adding phone lines and other infrastructure that is expensive to install and maintain. Cloud-based patient communications software is accessible from anywhere that has internet access, requires no new technology infrastructure updates to function, and opens up patient access capabilities.
Change Is Expensive and Cumbersome
While your legacy system may feel comfortable, asking it to do new things is usually difficult and costs more than it should. Replacing your legacy communications system with a cloud-based patient engagement platform eliminates expensive infrastructure requirements and changes your call operations from a cost center to a value add for your practice.
Meeting Patient Growth and Retention Goals Is Increasingly Difficult
High numbers of abandoned calls and excessive voicemails are telling you your system is straining under the load. 93% of legacy systems are not equipped to handle the multi-channel access that is increasingly a driver of successful patient experiences. A true patient engagement platform is designed to easily evolve to meet changing requirements and can be implemented without changing the preferred workflow of your existing staff.
Read more: Is your patient communication software holding you back?
Patient Service Is Hampered by a Clumsy Phone Menu
In today’s society, patients have come to expect fast, personalized service with multiple ways of contacting you. Delivering on those expectations is critical to developing practice loyalty. As organizations grow, they tend to continuously add more menu options – this leads to patient frustration & inaccurate routing of calls. Legacy systems are notoriously inefficient when it comes to handling the complexity required to implement those additions. Newer systems offer voice recognition features, custom routing based on recognized callers, and advanced AI to identify where to route callers with little interaction with a menu.
You Know Something Is Wrong, But You Can’t Tell What
Legacy systems are reluctant to give up the information stored in them. It usually requires moving through multiple applications and even then you rarely get the data in an easily-understood format. Without the critical information you need to make informed decisions, identifying problems and implementing workable solutions becomes an ongoing challenge. Cloud-based systems deliver the real-time, actionable analytics you need to understand what’s going on in your practice, what changes need to be made, and give insight into the effects of the changes you make.
Your call center is usually the first point of contact with your practice for new patients. As with any first impression, patients are already evaluating your practice based on how they are treated on the phone.
Don’t miss out on the opportunities to make a lasting impression with a cloud-based patient engagement platform.
Will your legacy system be able to meet your changing expectations? Explore the advantages of cloud-based communications with a call today.
You’ve had your legacy patient communications system for years, and you and your staff are comfortable with it. On the surface, it seems to be getting the job done. But is it driving patient satisfaction and value?
In today’s healthcare practice, data, ROI, and patient satisfaction constitute the trifecta of success. However, studies have found that more than 93 percent of healthcare call centers are managed in-house, are not equipped with omnichannel patient access, and provide limited visibility and data insights to drive business value. Older systems simply cannot deliver the level of service your patients expect or the insights you need, which can cost you time and money.
Here are some of the signals your legacy system may be telling you it’s time to part ways.
Adding New Locations and Providers Is Growing More Difficult
As your practice develops, you may face the challenge of providing communications access across multiple locations. With legacy systems, this translates into adding phone lines and other infrastructure that is expensive to install and maintain. Cloud-based patient communications software is accessible from anywhere that has internet access, requires no new technology infrastructure updates to function, and opens up patient access capabilities.
Change Is Expensive and Cumbersome
While your legacy system may feel comfortable, asking it to do new things is usually difficult and costs more than it should. Replacing your legacy communications system with a cloud-based patient engagement platform eliminates expensive infrastructure requirements and changes your call operations from a cost center to a value add for your practice.
Meeting Patient Growth and Retention Goals Is Increasingly Difficult
High numbers of abandoned calls and excessive voicemails are telling you your system is straining under the load. 93% of legacy systems are not equipped to handle the multi-channel access that is increasingly a driver of successful patient experiences. A true patient engagement platform is designed to easily evolve to meet changing requirements and can be implemented without changing the preferred workflow of your existing staff.
Read more: Is your patient communication software holding you back?
Patient Service Is Hampered by a Clumsy Phone Menu
In today’s society, patients have come to expect fast, personalized service with multiple ways of contacting you. Delivering on those expectations is critical to developing practice loyalty. As organizations grow, they tend to continuously add more menu options – this leads to patient frustration & inaccurate routing of calls. Legacy systems are notoriously inefficient when it comes to handling the complexity required to implement those additions. Newer systems offer voice recognition features, custom routing based on recognized callers, and advanced AI to identify where to route callers with little interaction with a menu.
You Know Something Is Wrong, But You Can’t Tell What
Legacy systems are reluctant to give up the information stored in them. It usually requires moving through multiple applications and even then you rarely get the data in an easily-understood format. Without the critical information you need to make informed decisions, identifying problems and implementing workable solutions becomes an ongoing challenge. Cloud-based systems deliver the real-time, actionable analytics you need to understand what’s going on in your practice, what changes need to be made, and give insight into the effects of the changes you make.
Your call center is usually the first point of contact with your practice for new patients. As with any first impression, patients are already evaluating your practice based on how they are treated on the phone.
Don’t miss out on the opportunities to make a lasting impression with a cloud-based patient engagement platform.
Will your legacy system be able to meet your changing expectations? Explore the advantages of cloud-based communications with a call today.
