With over 200 health care practitioners operating across five divisions and servicing close to 50,000 patients annually, Essen Health Care, a comprehensive, integrated network of health care providers, ensures leading-edge information technology is always the chief cornerstone of its growth strategies.
Essen has 17 years of experience caring for the medically under served communities in the Bronx, New York. As part of the company’s mission to provide patient-centered, compassionate care, Essen creates partnerships with innovative, world-class technology and service providers who leverage high-quality delivery models to help Essen manage population health at costs that remain effective and flexible.
To support their growth strategy, Essen turned to Masergy in 2013 to replace their legacy PBX communications solution with a Unified Communications as a Service-driven solution complete with Contact Center.
Masergy’s Cloud Communications solutions offer more flexibility than Essen’s outdated PBX and have the enterprise-grade call routing and comprehensive management capabilities that some of the largest U.S. Medical organizations struggle with bringing to their patient interactions.
With the clear vision to rapidly grow their business, Essen began focusing on developing operational visibility and efficiencies within their call center which would become a cornerstone of their strategic growth plans. Visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) such as call volume, number of calls answered, call duration, time to resolution, disposition codes that quantify nature of the call and other factors provide the critical data to efficiently staff and manage their call center. Efficient operation means keeping costs under control while also providing great patient experiences and meeting and exceeding service level standards.
To support their growth strategy, Essen turned to Masergy’s Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center solution. With UCaaS and Contact Center technologies at the core of their operations, Essen gained visibility into their KPIs that drove operational efficiencies for managing patient care while achieving targeted financial results, customer satisfaction, customer retention and helped Essen meet internal and regulatory driven quality standards.
Essen Health Care first implemented Masergy UCaaS and Contact Center solutions in its House Call division, which today aids about 7,000 homebound and elderly patients. Up to 80% of interactions with these patients happen by phone as they report healthcare issues or make other requests.
Since this department serves a population heavily reliant on telephonic support, there is an additional challenge for agents to reach and schedule patients for follow-ups and tests in a way that is efficient. With many of these patients covered by Medicare or Medicaid where patient communications experiences are measured and used in Value-Based Purchasing (Pay for Performance) initiatives, it’s critical that the phone service experience of these patients is of the highest quality possible, says Essen Health Care founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sumir Sahgal.
With Masergy’s centralized call support system, it has become easier and more efficient for Essen to manage and monitor House Call agents and the service they provide. Strong reporting capabilities provide Essen with critical data that is used daily by call-center managers to make the right decisions about requirements such as agent staffing, patient needs, and market trends. These operational benefits position Essen at “a high level to strategically move into the right direction for growth,” says Dr. Sahgal.
Given the proven performance in the House Call division, Essen went on to implement Masergy’s solution for its Office division Call Center, where 70 U.S. based agents regularly interact with over 200 providers and close to 50,000 patient-covered-lives across all New York boroughs. With the transparency and scalability of a centralized call center system, Essen has been able to ensure ongoing and effective patient care across its biggest divisions.
Based on improvements in its call center operations the last three years, Essen has set a new goal, to double its business to support 100,000 patients across its House Call, Office, Nursing Home, Urgent Care, and Care Management divisions over the next three years.
The UCaaS Analyst feature provides managers with actionable insights from a dashboard into KPI metrics such as call volume, number of calls answered and disposition codes that quantify the nature of the call. These are reviewed throughout the day to help managers make decisions that improve Essen’s ability to meet business requirements.
Essen also enjoys the “five-star” scalability and portability of the Masergy technology, as it’s opening new offices on a monthly basis and sometimes has to shift staff to support new locations. They just take their phone, plug it into the network jack at the new site, and are ready to go. Not only that, but the solution’s reliability is exceptional – to the point where people take it for granted, “which is when you know that the technology works,” Sahgal says. And, “Masergy’s support is very responsive,” he adds.
Masergy’s UCaaS solution positions Essen at “a high level to strategically move into the right direction for growth,” says Essen Health Care founder Dr. Sumir Sahgal.