After a year of lockdowns and business closures, a huge backlog exists for people who are all waiting for their annual healthcare check-ups.
Unlike in the first wave in March 2020, most healthcare services remain open, yet many people are understandably worried about attending these essential appointments for fear of catching the virus.
To combat this, responsible healthcare organisations are ensuring that their practices are sanitised and COVID secure, by taking time between each client for a deep cleanse of appointment rooms and anywhere else a client may have used.
Pre-appointment screening calls are now also essential best practice to ensure that whoever enters the clinic isn't showing any symptoms of COVID or has been in contact with a positive case.
As a result, healthcare professionals are now faced with an influx of calls from clients wanting to be reassured that they are COVID safe, on top of phoning out to perform the COVID-19 screening, and trying to support clients in clinic as they grapple with the new rules and procedures.
This ramp-up in workload is pulling vital resource away from front line staff, increasing stress and damaging the client experience.
Rather than panicking about dealing with the flood of new phone calls, dynamic healthcare organisations are utilising the power of outsourcing to take the burden off their workforce, by partnering with a professional call centre to perform the client screening and provide a COVID support line to answer client concerns.
By outsourcing pre-appointment calls and the flooding of customer
queries to a professional contact centre, these services can reduce
stress amongst their front line teams and allow them to focus on
providing care to patients and ensuring that they are COVID-secure.
Healthcare services, such as dentists, opticians and many private
clinics are essential services and remain open during this lockdown. But
it's no secret that they are still suffering due to the twelve weeks of
mandated closure at the beginning of the pandemic, on top of
implementing new controls.
These are particularly taxing times to work in healthcare, and contact centres can help to alleviate some of the stress of key workers.
