AI has been in the news a great deal lately, leaving healthcare providers and businesses worldwide wondering — how can I implement this technology to change how I operate? And how can I tell if AI is working for my network? A quick Google of “AI For Healthcare” reveals tons of different solutions for healthcare for automating both clinical and non-clinical services. What EliseAI offers is a groundbreaking solution for connecting with more patients over their preferred communication channel: The phone. Over 50% of your patients are mobile after all and want to complete a quick call to schedule an appointment or ask a question.
What is Elise VoiceAI?
VoiceAI is artificial intelligence that can directly talk with a human over the phone. This is very different from a recorded phone message or an interactive IVR flow. VoiceAI functions very similarly to a human being - responding dynamically to a wide range of questions and requests in a humanlike voice - as opposed to just spitting back a robotic sounding message.
The impact that VoiceAI can have is wide-ranging. But there are a few critical areas where it can drive outsized impact:
- Operating margin
- Abandonment rates
- Hold times
- Patient satisfaction
- Staff turnover
Five Tangible Benefits Of Using VoiceAI For Your Network
- Cut call center costs
Call center costs are rising significantly, driven primarily by increased wages and heightened demand. EliseAI partners, healthcare operators and providers who are already investing heavily into VoiceAI, have reported that each call handled by a contact center can cost them anywhere from $2 to $10 and that overage fees can kick in after certain volumes.
VoiceAI can cut that cost by 3-5x, eliminating overage fees and the charge-per-call billing model altogether. It’s ideal for managing overflow at no additional charge, and operating after-hours, covering the 50% of calls that come in outside of business hours. This gives patients the option schedule appointments and ask questions 24/7, even after your office closes. Consider the impact on your operating margin if you take contact centers out of the equation.
- Replace outdated phone operations like phone trees
Abandonment rates are a significant issue in the healthcare industry - impacting not only patient satisfaction but also health outcomes.Phone trees that prompt patients from one option to the next are frustrating as they create delays and can catch patients in endless loops, even hanging up on more patients who don’t know how to intuitively navigate the options.
They are rife with confusing or limited prompts, scripted replies, and options timing out. The result of this is clear: phone trees cause patients to drop off, with some organizations seeing 30% abandonment rates.
VoiceAI resolves all of these issues by enabling patients to directly state what they need in plain language. Elise can understand specific requests like, “Can I speak to Dr. Smith?” or “I would like to self-pay.” It will then triage the call to the correct team or individual or handle it end-to-end on its own.
- Stop burdening your front desk
Your front desk staff is tasked with much more than managing the phones and other needs can frequently take priority over incoming calls. When overwhelmed, your non-clinical team might frequently handle incoming calls by answering the phone but then immediately put patients on hold.
And the longer the hold time the higher the abandonment rates. An NIH study found that hold times longer than 107 seconds result in a 16% abandonment rate. If your practice receives 100 calls per hour and hold times average 1m45s, then the practice is still losing 16 patients per hour and almost 150 per day.
Alternatively, VoiceAI picks up every call instantly. It doesn’t matter if 1 000 calls are are coming in at once, the AI can pick up and begin a conversation on behalf of your team. VoiceAI’s ability to have a conversation, but also gather and store all patient information provided at once automates a wide range of workflows, relieving front desk staff from large amounts of administrative work.
- Improve quality of phone service and care with humanlike AI
Unsophisticated IVR systems and chatbots have made it seem as though there has to be a trade-off between automation and patient satisfaction. But conversational AI has rendered this trade-off obsolete.
There are a few personalizations as well as skills that VoiceAI has conversationally that heightens satisfaction and improves the patient phone experience:
- The voice is entirely customizable, making it sound friendly and humanlike
- VoiceAI speaks over 37 languages, immediately responding once it detects the language. This eliminates language barriers for nearly 66% of patients.
- If the caller is an existing patient, VoiceAI remembers them and dynamically pulls from their profile and contact history to provide personalized service.
- VoiceAI follows a set of rules in responding to questions, never answering anything they aren’t qualified to, and always offering a answer that’s legally safe for your practice and the patient
- VoiceAI always follows up after a phone call with multiple and continuous text messages. This will have a direct impact on your no-show rate.
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The average no-show rate is 10 to 30 percent, which translates into annual revenue losses of $150,000 to $300,000 per provider. VoiceAI always follows up via text multiple times vs. another reminder phone call, because only 18% of patients want a reminder phone call, and the response rate for text messages is 209 percent higher than it is for phone calls.
- Integrates seamlessly with EHR
The dreaded EHR. Primary care physicians already spend nearly 2 hours on electronic health record (EHR) tasks per hour of direct patient care. That’s more time logging than making direct facetime. Plus, 13% of front desk staff identify EHR as a huge training obstacle, which means they’re struggling with compliance and documentation.
VoiceAI might not be able to take all documentation off your team’s tasklist, but can automate the basics so that you can improve your workflow with existing databases.
VoiceAI integrates with EHR to auto-update patient information including
- Appointments
- Questions
- Name
- Contact information
- Insurance information
- Patient history as communicated via the phone and all other digital channels
This equates to nearly 2 hours saved every day for non-clinical staff.
By mitigating call center costs, replacing outdated phone operations, relieving front desk burdens, enhancing service quality, and seamlessly integrating with EHR, VoiceAI stands as a versatile tool that aligns technology with human-centric care and generates significant efficiencies for providers. The incorporation of VoiceAI not only meets the demands of the present but positions providers at the forefront of innovation.
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