healthcare related call center

[bob valdez]

Does anyone have experiance with either of the following:
1) ambulance transportation operations, 2) air ambulance transportation operations, or 3) hospital transfer center operations. I would apprecaite discussion regarding either of these areas. Thank you.

[RKirton]

I have extensive experience with ambulance dispatch operations, which I would be happy to share.

[salthaus]

Hi there
I have ahd substantial experience in the Australian hospital transportation and EMS area as well as HR type environments.

Be happy to help with specifics

Regards
Stuart

[bob valdez]

Originally posted by RKirton
I have extensive experience with ambulance dispatch operations, which I would be happy to share.

Good morning and thank you for replying to my message.
We provide communications center operations for 10 air ambulances (helicopters) and 1 fixed wing air ambulance. Our clients have asked us to explore providing transfer center capability for mid-size hospitals, as well as, call center application for other departments within their environment.

Do you provide call center type activities for your clients now, do you forsee such activity in the future, and, do you have any advice regarding specific equipment or equipment vendors.
Additionally, do you have specific training programs in place for your call center application personnel.

Best regards,

Bob

[bob valdez]

Originally posted by salthaus
Hi there
I have ahd substantial experience in the Australian hospital transportation and EMS area as well as HR type environments.

Be happy to help with specifics

Regards
Stuart

Good morning and thank you for replying to my message. We provide communications center operations for 10 air ambulances (helicopters) and 1 fixed wing air ambulance. Our clients have asked us to explore providing transfer center capability for mid-size hospitals, as well as, call center application for other departments within their environment.

Do you provide call center type activities for your cleints now, do you forsee such activity in the future, and, do you have any advice regarding specific equipment or equipment vendors.

Additionally, do you have specific trining programs in place for call center application personnel.

Best regards,

Bob.

[RKirton]

We just celebrated our 25th anniversary. Early in our center's life we began taking on "extra" work for our customers, like data processing and call center operations not directly related to our core mission. This worked well for awhile but although the call volume related to our core mission increased our customers willingness to increase our funding or to take back the "extra" work did not increase.

Our current director and deputy director have had to spend many hours negotiating and clarifying expectations with our customers.

My suggestion is if you take on any of this work, make sure it is included in your contracts from the start.

[bob valdez]

Originally posted by RKirton
We just celebrated our 25th anniversary. Early in our center's life we began taking on "extra" work for our customers, like data processing and call center operations not directly related to our core mission. This worked well for awhile but although the call volume related to our core mission increased our customers willingness to increase our funding or to take back the "extra" work did not increase.

Our current director and deputy director have had to spend many hours negotiating and clarifying expectations with our customers.

My suggestion is if you take on any of this work, make sure it is included in your contracts from the start.

RKirton,

Very interesting. What type of operation is your center involved in ? I am interested in talking with you further, about this.
Please feel free to call me direct @ (909) 717-7051 or I can be paged from our corporate office @ (888) 499-9495. Please give me a call to explore this further.

I apprecaite your experiance and insight.

Best regards,

Bob.

[salthaus]

Hi all
The thread is enormously interesting. I am a consultant specialising in the call centre field and as such tend to spend a good deal of my time coming in and either implementing complex solutions or fixing a mess.

The current situation that I am working in relates to a call centre located in Sydney that is the centralised intake point for child abuse in the state of New South Wales. Initially the call centre was established to take in all calls that related specifically to the parent department however the modelling that they did originally was flawed and therefore was grossly understaffed even for the Child Abuse scenario. Consequently in the 11 months that this cetre has been open, there has been much rethinking on the business processes and questioning - what is it that is actually done at the Helpline (the name of the call centre).

The scenario has settled somewhat now and I have now put together a sensible org chart that will work (and done myself out of a job as I have created a positioh of the Operations Manager) but also looked at the implementation of solid, robust and well known technology such as CTI - I found it incredible that a call centre of this complexity did not have CTI - nor has it got CRM however that has yet to come.

My point however is this. With the rethinking of the scope of the call centre, there has been a realisation that call centre are not the saviour that everyone thought they were 5 years ago. Indeed, when established correctly and put together with sound advice, they are an extremely valuable way of doing business but generally speaking requires a fairly major review of the business process. This is exactly what has happened in every call centre I have worked on be it EMS, HR, Defence or whatever.

The other side also has an interesting component. In the case of the Helpline, the call centre technology was completely over dimensioned. Accordingly, we have been able to establish a concept of "shared services" which I might say is working very well with a number of govt agencies. We have the floor space (as we are a 24 x7 there is plenty of room) and the technology is there to support virtually anything that we throw at it. This is viewed very positively by the govt of the day and we are the bright haired boys now.

Hope that provides some additional info.

[robertn]

Bob,

I'm a little late joining the discussion so you may have already answered your question. If not, perhaps I can help. I've managed the communications area of large and small emergency and non-emergency medical transportation providers. Both public and private.

I also have experience in other types of medical / health care related call centers - both inbound and outbound environments.

I would be happy to help.

Bob