Defining Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that are put in place to ensure that patients are being serviced in a timely way. Patients often call for billing claims, appointment requests, nurse triage, forms, prescription refills, etc… Some of these calls may be routine while others may be life or death. Given the variety of requests that come through the contact center, how does a healthcare system set performance metrics? Most contact centers focus on the Average Speed of Answer (ASA), the Abandonment Rate (ABR), First Time Call Resolution (FTR), the Average Handle Time (AHT) and Service Level (SLA).
Let’s examine these key performance indicators from the patient’s perspective. The ASA, ABR and SLA ensure that the call is answered quickly. The FTR ensures that the patient’s request is handled the first time to eliminate wasted time and frustration. The AHT ensures that your staff is capable of handling the patient’s requests with agility and skill.
How do you know if these key performance indicators really matter to the patient? How do you know if the targets you set are meaningful? Have you asked your patients for their opinion on the subject?
Meeting Patient Needs
Meeting the needs of patients is based on a simple premise – if you understand and measure what is relevant in the eyes of your patient, you can improve their experiences.
With this in mind, it’s important to involve the patient in setting performance targets. Aspect has post call survey tools which are a great way to capture key pieces of patient provided information. Patients should be asked to indicate acceptable wait times on the phone as well as comment on wait times for appointments and their willingness to be entered into the system as a referral. By collecting and analyzing this information, patients can be stratified into groups as some may have different needs than others, ex: Adult vs. Pediatrics, General vs. Specialty and Routine vs. Cancer Screening requests. Assessing the soft skills of your staff and the simplicity of getting through the appointment scheduling process are two key pieces of the patient experience puzzle that can be captured in post call surveys.
Aspect allows contact center analysts to assess the patient’s needs through statistical measures. The Data Views affords the analysts to extract any metric and extrapolate the statistical connection, ex: ‘How long do patients wait before they abandon a call’?
There are many paths on the road to understanding the patient’s needs. Data analysis and post call survey solutions from Aspect help you create the most direct way to establish meaningful key performance indicators and ultimately better patient experiences.
Want to learn more about how healthcare analytics can improve your patient’s experience? Join Aspect and Healthcare Intelligence for a complimentary one-hour webinar on June 30 at 2:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. PT.) Register today!
