[February 28, 2006]

MediCall Efficiently Delivers Customer Care with Echopass

BY SUSAN J. CAMPBELL

TMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist

For those patients who are frustrated with waiting for a doctor or nurse to return a phone call or the healthcare professional who is overloaded with responsibilities and can’t seem to get that call in, the relief could come from a company like MediCall that facilitates inbound and outbound patient communications for health plans, durable medical equipment providers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and physician group practices.

Using the Echopass on-demand, always on, guaranteed and end-to-end contact center infrastructure, MediCall has been able to lower the overhead costs of delivering patient and member care up to 75 percent. MediCall enables existing medical staff to stay focused on patient care by managing follow-up, data gathering and outreach duties.

Highly skilled, well-educated and experienced healthcare professionals make up MediCall’s Philippines-based contact center which is powered by Echopass EchoSystem™. A wide range of routine patient interactions are handled by these physicians and nurses, such as member welcome calls, health risk assessment surveys, compliance and reminder calls, disease and case management support services, patient satisfaction, out-patient discharge calls and more.

John Chess, CEO of MediCall noted that the company initially selected Echopass for its full functionality, high scalability and guaranteed service levels. Since implementation two years ago, Echopass has continued to provide much higher value, helping MediCall to grow its business five-fold and to better serve the healthcare industry with a solution that leads to significant cost savings for MediCall’s customers.

Chess added that EchoSystem supports all of MediCall’s touchpoints, including phone, Web Chat and e-mail while also integrating with existing customer applications, including CRM, electronic medical records and medical practice management systems. Improving patient care and reducing costs with Echopass has proven to be a three-sided win: for MediCall, customers and ultimately the patients.

Improved customer service levels delivered by MediCall’s custom EchoSystem and communications center include:

· Allowing nurses to focus on core patient care and not time-consuming data gathering and administrative tasks.

· Allowing MediCall’s clients to expand their customer service teams and overall capability to support e-mail and Web chat quickly and easily through the Echopass on-demand platform.

· Increasing patient and member satisfaction through increased interaction and services.

· Proving HIPPA compliance through record keeping and call recording archives.

· Supplying up-to-date patient data to nurse agents through integration with existing CRM, electronic medical records and medical practice management systems.

· Ensuring the highest call quality for VoIP, managed by Echopass, for inbound and outbound calls to MediCall’s offshore communications center.

According to Vin Deschamps, CEO of Echopass, examining MediCall’s business ‘pain point’ made it clear that they would benefit from Echopass’ always on, end-to-end, on-demand contact center solution, especially given their need for flexibility and agility in the face of ever-evolving customer support needs and requirements specific to the healthcare industry.

Deschamps views the pairing of the two companies as a terrific example of how the EchoSystem enables enhanced, affordable and dependable customer communication support.

One thing that medical professionals never seem to have enough of is time. This is often a detriment to themselves and the patients whom they are attempting to serve. MediCall is providing a valuable service, but must have proper management of that service in order to be effective.

Echopass positions its offerings so that selection of the solution is almost a no-brainer. Is the integration seamless enough, however that the patient feels they are receiving top medical service and not something comparable to calling their credit card company? If so, EchoSystem is providing an excellent solution. If not, MediCall is missing out on extensive opportunities.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

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