Automate Healthcare Scheduling with Conversational AI and Improve Patient Experience
Automating appointment management with conversational interactive voice response (IVRs) and intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) should be a top priority for healthcare contact centers. Hospitals and clinics receive an abundance of appointment requests, and often cannot handle the high call volume efficiently. This significantly impacts the patient experience and health system revenue.
Appointments are critical to the patient-provider relationship. Each interaction is an opportunity for health systems to demonstrate exceptional care, knowledge, and expertise. Managing appointments inefficiently disrupts the patient journey and creates revenue loss. According to MedCity News, health systems lose 10-30% of revenue due to patient leakage. With many callers making appointments and limited time slots, effective scheduling is key. When long hold times prevent patients from rescheduling an appointment, the slot remains empty and both the health system and the provider lose revenue.
For patients waiting to schedule an appointment, excessive hold times delay important care and cause anxiety. These issues create a negative impression and can prompt patients to change providers and share their frustration with friends and family or online. According to a healthcare market research report, when deciding where to go for care, 31% of consumers rely on recommendations from friends and family and 26% rely on ratings from other patients.
When patients have a hard time accessing care, it sends the wrong message about the healthcare provider. Patients should feel that their well-being is a top concern.
To achieve high patient satisfaction levels and optimize operations, health systems must automate appointment management with conversational AI. IVRs and IVAs handle each scheduling request a contact center receives; no matter the volume of patient demand. A healthcare consumer simply states their needs and the voice-driven technology works quickly to complete the task. When it’s easy for callers to self-serve, they get the help they need and in the process, they reduce hold times for callers who want to reach a live representative.
Benefits of speech-enabled technology to automate management
The healthcare consumer experience is enhanced with:
- Convenient access to care – Self-service enables patients and caregivers to make or change appointments at any time, reducing stress and frustration. Efficient navigation is key to consumers; according to a 2022 Accenture report, 78% of patients who’ve recently switched providers were prioritizing ease of navigation.
- Frictionless interactions – Callers communicate their requests easily as the AI leverages advanced natural language processing (NLP) to respond to human language seamlessly.
The health system improves with:
- Revenue growth – Conversational AI optimizes scheduling and fills the calendar, increasing the number of patients it treats.
- Patient retention – When AI tools enable hospitals and clinics to reliably handle scheduling demand, there is less frustration and patient turnover.
- Improved reputation – Happy with their experiences, healthcare consumers may spread the word to other patients looking for high-quality care and efficient service.
About Parlance
For over 25 years, Parlance has been a leader in the healthcare IT space. Our conversational AI improves patient navigation and removes barriers to access. Implementing ‘low-customer-effort’ approaches to service drives loyalty and prevents unnecessary revenue leakage. Our generative IVR and IVA solutions enable hospitals and clinics to deliver highly personalized service, automate routine call routing with ease, and perform tasks faster and with higher accuracy.
70% of healthcare consumers connect with healthcare providers on the phone. Parlance conversational AI solutions for health systems accelerate patient access to care for over 1000 hospitals and clinics across the United States. Healthcare consumers easily connect to people, access information, and manage their appointments, no matter the volume of patient demand.
