IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aza/mih000/y2022v6i3p206-221.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

More than a call centre: Creating a family-centric experience to increase access and revenue

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, Connie

    (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, USA)

  • Lieberenz, Scott

    (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, USA)

  • Mouton, Brandon

    (The Appointment Center, USA)

  • Snell, Christine

    (The Appointment Center, USA)

Abstract

The journey towards centralising any business support function in any organisation is challenging and often marked by turf battles and the inclination to lean towards the status quo. For healthcare organisations, in particular, to move towards centralising any support function is to confront the complexities of a care delivery system. There is sensitivity with every part of the patient’s journey before the patient is seen at their appointment (with referral management, scheduling and financial clearance), to ensure that critical care needed is not delayed. Especially for organisations that have traditionally run a decentralised model with departments operating under their own rules, hearing the word ‘centralisation’ is often not well received and is met with resistance from faculty and staff. This paper provides an overview of one organisation’s journey towards building an efficient, centralised model, in a healthcare organisation managing complex subspecialities, and describes how the COVID-19 pandemic provided a platform to showcase the strength of centralisation, a transition into a remote work environment and a fast track for ambulatory operations to ‘buy-in’ to the centralised model. Although there is still a long road ahead to fully centralise services in the organisation, several successes and strategies (such as establishing dashboards, key performance indicators and a culture of performance accountability) will be shared to help lend ideas and insight to other organisations looking to move towards centralisation. Building a strong foundation that maximises efficiency while remaining resource neutral serves as a win for both the organisation and the patients and families served. Ultimately, the investments made to establish and optimise The Appointment Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has improved referral turnaround time, call abandonment rates, increased access, utilisation and revenue for the organisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Connie & Lieberenz, Scott & Mouton, Brandon & Snell, Christine, 2022. "More than a call centre: Creating a family-centric experience to increase access and revenue," Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 6(3), pages 206-221, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aza:mih000:y:2022:v:6:i:3:p:206-221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/6972/download/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/6972/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    call centre; cost-effectiveness; organisational efficiency; centralisation; remote work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aza:mih000:y:2022:v:6:i:3:p:206-221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Henry Stewart Talks (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.