Just a Call Away

Veterans Health Administration’s VISN 20 Chief Medical Officer Frank Marre reports that VISN 20 is currently working on developing an up-to-date responsive call center. This is not a small problem as VISN 20 receives about 200,000 calls per month but roughly 40,000 veterans hang up because of poor phone service and long waits.

VISN 20’s major call center initiative now underway plans to have telephone calls answered in 30 seconds. The plan is for call representatives to be highly trained with strong customer service skills supported by a knowledge base that will operate much like a Google search engine to help address questions.

All facilities within VISN 20 are getting ready to join the “Contact Center Cloud” and adopt processes like the “Hunt Group” which will allow the telephone to ring for three seconds at one person’s phone on the primary care team. If the call is not answered, the call will then move to the second person and keep “hunting” for someone who is available. In this way, the majority of calls will be answered within twelve seconds.

Thirty percent of calls involve medication refills and renewals. To handle medication refills and renewals efficiently, this category would be listed as the first choice on the telephone tree. Then these inquiries will be directed to an automated system where refills would be quickly ordered. Another process called the “Call Back” will enable veterans to choose a call back option as soon as an agent is available.

VISN 20 launched a pilot in July, but unfortunately, some unforeseen challenges occurred which necessitated a roll back. However, by the end of the calendar year, all facilities should be connected to the VISN 20 Contact Center Cloud and at that point veterans will be just a call away.