Consolidated Call Center Dials Up Benefits for LifeBridge Health
// By Lisa D. Ellis //
When a patient experiences a life-threatening emergency at LifeBridge Health in Baltimore, help is summoned through automated notifications from the centralized call center, which sends a message right to members of the response team’s phones.
This is one of the many benefits that care teams experience, thanks to LifeBridge’s investment in a new call center platform that simplifies functions that were previously spread out among a few locations. Staff, patients, and physicians are all benefitting from the change.
The Need for a Unified Infrastructure
As one the largest trauma centers in the region with four acute care hospital locations, LifeBridge Health recently recognized that it needed a way to simplify and unify its call center operations. Since the call center is typically the first contact patients have with the system, it was important that the experience be a positive one to encourage patients to make appointments.
Yet the previous system at LifeBridge was spread out between two separate locations with 25 operators (working in three shifts 24/7) handling 80,000 calls per month. Thanks to the addition of a new medical center building, the call volume was growing, putting further strain on an already taxed infrastructure. This was frustrating for employees and also for the patients calling in.
In addition, the system needed to handle time-critical situations relating to patient care and safety. With so much at stake, LifeBridge reached out to Spok, a health care communications company that offers solutions to improve workflow and increase staff satisfaction and efficiency and increase customer satisfaction with better response times and messaging.