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    William Beaumont Army Medical Center Call Center

    EL PASO, TX, UNITED STATES

    09.03.2015

    Story by Amabilia Payen 

    William Beaumont Army Medical Center

    FORT BLISS, Texas – William Beaumont Army Medical Center is about to get a much needed upgrade to their automated call distribution (ACD) system. The new $250,000 system will be the heart of the Medical Center’s front desk and call center operations and provide an array of new technology and capabilities for WBAMC.

    The upgrade will improve and better integrate the numerous call trees patients currently have to navigate, along with increasing the capacity of the system to better manage peak call times. It will provide the call center a better view of call volumes and patterns to strategically place agents at high utilization clinics. It will also allow leadership to better track call times, talk time, and call requests, and patients the ability to request call backs instead of waiting during high volume times. In addition, the system will interface with WBAMC’s electronic health record allowing it to pre-emptively load patient demographics to expedite numerous processing steps for agents, thereby further reducing call times for patients.

    WBAMC’s current system supports a 25 person call center and 135 embedded front desk agents spread across five large medical facilities. The new system will be a welcomed relief, replacing a system originally put into service nearly 15 years ago when the supported population was less than 40,000. This upgrade brings WBAMC’s call center operations up to the level of most large corporations; allowing the medical center to better manage the nearly 120,000 incoming calls it receives annually and provides a level of service not previously available to its beneficiaries.

    WBAMC is hopeful that the new system will be operational by the end of the calendar year. To prepare for the system’s implementation, WBAMC leadership recently spent an afternoon in the call center taking live calls from patients to experience the day to day operations and understand the challenges commonly experienced by both patients and agents. The event was a huge success allowing both agents and leadership to communicate challenges and concerns in preparation for the transition.

    Capt. Sean Seay, deputy chief of the Clinical Operations Division, WBAMC, said, “Our call agents truly have an important and challenging job working behind the scenes of William Beaumont. Their contribution to the success of our organization often goes unnoticed, so anything that we can do as leaders to make their jobs easier and improve the quality of service provided to our customers I support. This new automated call distribution system will do just that!”

    WBAMC has made significant improvements despite the operational limitations of its current system: call times have dropped to well under three minutes, lost calls have dropped, and agent volume continues to rise. While WBAMC is committed to providing the highest quality phone satisfaction, it acknowledges that the current system has limited its ability to meet the demand and expectations of patients. This mirrors the latest Army Provider Level Satisfaction Survey (APLSS) that reflects that only 77 percent are satisfied with WBAMC’s overall phone satisfaction. While this statistic is up three percent over the last six months, WBAMC’s hopes that the new system will provide a level of service that the current system has failed to provide.

    WBAMC looks forward to enhancing its capabilities to better serve the Fort Bliss community. Be on the lookout for these new improvements soon. If beneficiaries wish to provide feedback, please contact WBAMC patient advocate cell at 915-742-2692 to do so.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 09.03.2015
    Date Posted: 10.09.2015 16:16
    Story ID: 178185
    Location: EL PASO, TX, US

    Web Views: 80
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN