Kyruus Blog

Without question COVID-19 has caused incredible disruption to industries across the board, with the healthcare sector experiencing some of the greatest challenges. At the same time, however, the pandemic has been a catalyst for rapid innovation, revealing opportunities to rethink and transform approaches to care delivery and access. From learning to operate remote call centers to looking for more digitally-enabled ways to engage with patients (e.g., virtual care, virtual assistants), the pandemic has pushed health systems to reimagine—and quickly—their approaches to enabling patient access.

Thanks to developments in technology, many employees and business owners alike have been able to work from home and have been doing so for years. However, for a growing number of Americans, working remotely is no longer a nice workplace perk, but rather the new norm. Now, amid the recent COVID-19 pandemic, most health system access centers and their agents are following suit, raising the question: is this the new normal? The answer to that question is likely “yes.” Even though working remotely has been a transition for most of us, many of our customers have found that taking their access center operations remote has been incredibly beneficial for both their organizations and their agents. Even post-pandemic, most health systems we engage with have expressed that they plan to keep remote work at least part of their access center operations on a permanent basis. Here are three reasons why taking your access center remote can offer a win-win.

How to read this graph: The boxes represent if a term appeared in the top 10 condition-based search terms for a day within a given week, while the darkness of the color represents the volume of the searches for those terms.* As of this week, the CDC reported more than 1M confirmed cases of COVID-19 and close to 70K deaths across the United States. Yet, despite these grim figures, data indicates that several states may have reached their peaks, including former hotspot, New York City, where there has been a continued decline in both deaths and hospitalizations due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, other states have already begun the process of reopening their economies. So now the conversation for health systems is starting to shift from simply how to respond to the pandemic to what steps to take to move forward and open up more access for unrelated appointment needs.

Since the COVID-19 virus emerged in the U.S., the country’s health systems and hospitals have felt a significant strain on their resources and staff as they continue to face rising volumes of patients. Amid this chaos, many organizations have risen to the challenge, using technology to expand access and relieve some of the pressure on their limited resources. Here are some of the ways health systems are using technology to expand access to care during the pandemic:

This is the third post in our Call Center Patient Experience Series. Over the course of this three post series, we’ve explored some of the top barriers to patient access through health system call centers and how they impede a positive patient experience: outdated provider directories, limited patient-provider matching capabilities, and lack of visibility into provider availability.

This is the second post in our Call Center Patient Experience Series. Over the course of this three post series, we’ll explore some of the top barriers to patient access through health system call centers and how they impede a positive patient experience: outdated provider directories, lack of patient-provider matching capabilities, and insight into provider availability.