If you’re a growing organization, you need a patient access and intake strategy. It’s that simple. As hospitals and clinics merge and integrate into large health systems, it can be confusing for patients to know where and how to receive care. Before it gets too frustrating, start coordinating efforts to build a patient access and intake strategy across the entire enterprise.
Creating a clear-cut patient access and intake strategy helps across the board, not just the patient experience. A great strategy standardizes and improves call management, employee engagement, and physician experiences related to access and intake operations. It’s a game changer.
A functional strategy helps to bring together the many different moving parts of an organization and creates cohesion and a unifying goal throughout. It allows different departments to support each other and collaborate instead of working as a many-headed hydra. A great strategy allows the entire structure to ensure that the separate priorities align with overall business goals so that every department is working together.
To start creating an effective access and intake strategy, the first step is conducting an assessment of your own organization. Different groups need to take different paths to success. Some might start by looking at the state of technology, which could be disconnected and unorganized throughout the system. Others might need to examine how employee performance is measured and if it makes sense in a way that is aligned to organizational goals. Contact centers usually benefit from Ultimate Agent™, our program that optimizes agent recruitment, onboarding, and performance, thereby lowering costs and improving the patient experience.
What matters most is that you’re trying. Those of us in healthcare are here because we want to help people. Creating an easy and easy-to-understand way for patients to access care helps. Let’s start there.