This article is sponsored by DecisivEdge. In this Voices interview, Behavioral Health Business sits down with Karl D. Fischer, Managing Director of Customer Experience Transformation, DecisivEdge, to learn about some of the key challenges facing treatment centers today and the steps providers can take to overcome them. He explains how DecisivEdge helps providers optimize customer experience, care delivery and workflow solutions to streamline operations — specifically by leveraging their existing technology.
Behavioral Health Business: What career experiences do you most draw from, in your role today?
Karl Fischer: I spent a number of years working in customer service and customer experience roles in sales, marketing and service operations, which I draw on every day. I’m the father of two adult males in long-term recovery, and I’ve been lucky enough to merge my passion for helping people in need of recovery with my profession. I’ve been in the shoes of the parent who needs to get a hold of an admissions center and get help. It’s been a confluence of my personal and professional history.
What are some of the key challenges facing treatment centers today?
In today’s environment, many treatment facility admission centers are being overwhelmed by non-admissions-related calls. There are numerous fraud and spam calls. There are people calling in to learn something about a loved one who is already admitted. And there are people who call in to figure out the details of their next appointment reservation and transportation pickup.
These calls put a sizeable strain on the call centers, which in turn puts stress on the agents, and right now, we’re seeing as high as 95% of the calls in a contact center fall into the non-admissions-related category. Artificial intelligence can help mitigate the challenges associated with this trend.
The Behavioral Health Business 2023 Outlook Survey Report indicated that 77% of respondents who identified as working for organizations that provide behavioral health, mental health and addiction recovery services are worried about staffing. This is a major challenge in admissions centers where even the most experienced agents lack the proper tools and capabilities to execute a one-call resolution for inbound inquiries. There’s a limited line of sight and integration for most of the systems out there, and many of the workflows are manual and cumbersome as well. Redundant data entry is prone to error and a waste of time, and it can be avoided with the right platform strategy.
What are some of the top factors driving those challenges?
One of the key drivers of the stress on admissions centers is the environment created by COVID-19. I hate defaulting to the pandemic, but the reality is that it took our nation by storm right after the Affordable Care Act was passed. The Affordable Care Act opened up more parity for payments, and it opened up more discussion about mental and behavioral health. A growing number of people are being funded for help, which has increased the demand and driven providers to expand their service lines.
More medical-assisted treatments (MATs) and intensive outpatient programs (IOPs,) in addition to residential, have increased the job complexity for admissions agents and centers as a whole. Providers have expanded their options and the agents have to understand all of them, which creates an entirely new set of challenges.
On the technology front, many staff members have moved into a cloud-based platform because they’re working from home. On the social front, the stigma around behavioral and mental health treatment is fading. And on the environmental front, the shift toward a digital workforce has created training and technology-related challenges that have made it difficult to operate an effective contact center in general.
How is DecisivEdge helping providers optimize customer experience, care delivery, and workflow solutions to streamline operations?
We’re a customer experience company that uses existing technology to drive results. DecisivEdge is not a platform, it is a strategy services and technological capabilities leader. We come into a contact center and do an assessment to figure out how we can optimize their operations using what they already have while identifying and bridging gaps between their business objectives and their current state.
Our No.1 goal is to save lives, and we strive to connect customers with the right care the first time by assessing the entire admissions process from the top of the funnel all the way through. Then we help providers integrate those processes into a unified flow, which streamlines the operation as a whole. We work with leadership and admissions teams to reduce the rate of contact from as high as 16 calls per admission to two or three. It’s never going to be a one-and-done process, but there is room to get much more efficient.
How can treatment centers enhance their patient and agent experience by leveraging their existing technology?
There’s been an aversion to self-service today. But by using automation and technology such as an interactive virtual agent, we can provide relatively detailed updates and information about appointments, patients and transportation, among other things, to reduce the burden on the front end. By streamlining telephone technology and eliminating what we call “swivel-chair,” where an agent has to use multiple systems and screens to handle one call, providers can tighten the time to admission and minimize the chances of a prospective customer experiencing buyer’s remorse. I’ve been there. I’m envisioning right now. When we were calling to get my youngest son into treatment, he knew what life was going to be like for the next 30 days, and he started to have second thoughts about committing — but that’s not an option.
There has to be a tight window to admission because if it’s not easy and effective, it’s not going to work. By integrating front-end technology with the EMR and other records, providers can paint a vivid picture of each client and where they are on their journey.
What can treatment centers do to effect change, and what results have we seen thus far?
Treatment centers can more effectively change lives if they step back and assess themselves. With all of the M&A activity happening today, providers have been able to focus on improving their clinical operations, but they have failed to address the front-end inefficiencies. In a digital world where patients can request prescriptions and schedule appointments on their phones, the front end is still using direct mail and landline phones instead of newer technologies that streamline customer outreach.
We just finished a large project for RCA, and their head of admissions, Mike Frisbie, relayed the following results to me. They dropped their operating budget in the admissions center by nearly 50%, reduced their average handle time by 20%, and increased their revenue per agent.
When providers are getting the right calls to qualified, tech-enabled admissions agents, there are significantly more opportunities to provide people with the help they need.
Finish this sentence: “The behavioral health industry in 2023 will be the year of…”
…doing more with less.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
DecisivEdge is a technology consulting leader with innovative solutions for customer experience transformation, healthcare transformation and lending optimization. If your admissions center is overwhelmed by unrelated calls, or your admissions process is manually intensive, redundant, and cumbersome, DecisivEdge can help. Contact [email protected] to learn more.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].
