Tag: health

Categories
Healthcare Call Centers

The Cost of Healthcare Reform

This week I received my quarterly health insurance bill.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  It showed a 49% increase in my premium.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Convinced it was in error, I naively called the company’s call center to get it corrected.  The rep was nonchalant about the whole thing, acting as though a 49% increase was normative.  When I protested, he began offering lame excuses:

  • The rates always go up
  • It’s because of inflation
  • There have been too many claims

Each time, I dismissed his explanation, telling him that his stated reason was insufficient to justify a 49% increase in my premium.

Not able to dissuade me, he finally relented, sighed, and offered a plausible and convincing reason.  “The rate increase is the result of added costs that we are incurring because of the Obama healthcare reform,” he said.  His tone was somber and sincere.  He was no longer mechanically talking at me, but was personally talking with me.  I believed him.

He then worked with me, offering options.  I ended up increasing my deductible several thousand dollars in order to keep my premium in check.

His first three reasons where, I am sure, the standard script that he was supposed to follow.  What I am not sure of, is if he deviated from his script in placing the blame on healthcare reform or if that was an official corporate statement.

What I do know, is that I agree with him.  It is what I feared all along, that healthcare reform would end up costing me more and offering me less.

Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D., is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Get his book, Sticky Customer Service.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

The AWOL Blogger is Back

It’s been two weeks since my last blog and some are wondering what happened.  This is the longest span of non-blog-activity that I have encountered since I began walking down this path.

It’s not that I’ve run out of ideas; I have plenty: from the rabbits in my yard, to Super Bowl ads, to the worst automated-attendant recording I’ve ever encountered, to the packaging on my sandwich, to football.  Then there’s, politics, the healthcare debate, the economy, and unemployment. 

Oh, did I mention I had the flu?  Yep, I’ll blog about that too!  I imagine that really excites you.  Then there are the ideas that got away — the one’s that had a time-sensitive element, whose opportunity has come and gone.

So, if it’s not ideas, is it time?  No, it’s not so much a time issue either — though I have been busy trying to get caught up from the holidays and whatnot.

The real issue is I’ve been doing more writing than normal, rendering the allure of blogging a bit less appealing and more along the lines of work — yuck.

Regardless of that, the reality is that I’ve all these blog ideas spinning around in my mind and the only recourse to free me of them is to release them into the blogosphere.

So, I’m back, I primed, and I’m going to resume blogging — on Monday.

Have a great weekend

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s new book: The Successful Author: Discover the Art of Writing and Business of Publishing. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book The Successful Author for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Healthcare Call Centers

Call Centers Can Aid in Healthcare Reform

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

I’ve spent most of my adult life in call center related vocations. I’ve worked in call centers and for a call center vendor, did consulting for call centers, audited call centers, wrote about call centers, and publish magazines, newsletters, and websites about call centers.

Call centers are a vital part of the global economy, moving information and facilitating commerce by taking and processing orders, providing customer service, taking messages, and even assisting in and providing healthcare. Yes, healthcare.

Hospital and medical related call centers ease patient-practitioner communication, provide medical answering services, allow patients to schedule appointments, send reminders of those appointments, refer callers to doctors based on specialty or geographic location, and dispense medical advice. Even though I am aware of this, I’ve never taken the next logical step to see that medical call centers can play a vital role in healthcare reform.

Fortunately, Doctors Barton Schmitt and Andrew Hertz have. They recently completed a position paper regarding the role of medical call centers in health care reform. The position paper, titled The Case for Publicly Funded Medical Call Centers, offers as a premise that, “every citizen should have the right to reach a telephone care nurse at any hour day or night for assistance with illnesses, injuries or other acute medical problems.”

Its content describes the primary functions of today’s medical call centers, an overview of their outcomes, evidence of their ability to reduce healthcare costs and recommendations for making these centers a critical part of universal access to health care. Medical call centers are used in many other countries and have been found to be cost-effective, so why not in the US?

If you agree with the premise, why not pass it on?

Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D., is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Get his book, Sticky Customer Service.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Do You Tweet?

Are you into Twitter?  Do you tweet?

Twitter, by the way, is self-billed as a “social messaging utility.”   I prefer an alternate description as a “micro-blogging service.”

Frankly, it’s been a challenge for me to keep these blog posts under my self-imposed limit of 300 words (this one stands at 278), so I can’t fathom being succinct enough to stay under Twitters 140-character limit (which is less than this sentence).

Regardless, many people are tweeting away.  According to Audience Development magazine, who was reporting on Nielsen findings, the growth rate on Twitter from February 2008 to February 2009 was an amazing 1,382%  That is an astronomically huge jump.

To check Twitter out I signed up for a couple of feeds.  First, is President Obama.  He (or at least someone purporting to be him) doesn’t tweet to often. 

The last one was asking me to tangibly show my support for his healthcare reform plan.  I agree with his three principles (reduce costs, guaranteed choice, and ensure accessibility) but see them as being mutually exclusive, so I declined to sign his petition.

The other feed that I subscribe to is Erwin McManus, who recently embarked on a trip to Europe (he’s back now).  It was interesting to journey with him, albeit in 140-character increments, but I would often forget to check the feed. 

I suppose if I received them as text messages on my cell phone it would be more convenient, but I block text messages on my cell phone because I don’t want to be interrupted with text messages on my cell phone.

I have better things too do.

Besides, I still need to carve out time to set up my Facebook account.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s new book: The Successful Author: Discover the Art of Writing and Business of Publishing. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book The Successful Author for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Healthcare Call Centers

Google Tracks Flu Trends

Google claims to know about flu outbreaks two weeks before the CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — really.

Peter DeHaan, Publisher and Editor of AnswerStat

It’s an amazingly simple, yet elegant solution.  Aggregating their vast database of user searches, Google has determined that they can predict and report on a flu outbreak up to two weeks before the CDC, merely by watching for an increase in flu-related searches.

According to the Website google.org/flutrends, “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity.  Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.”

Check it out — especially the demo in the “How does this work” section — it’s quite interesting.  Last year during the flu season, Google consistently reported on flu trends two weeks before the CDC, including an outbreak on January 28, 2008.  In the final analysis, there was an amazing correlation between Google’s numbers and the CDC — just that Google was two weeks ahead of the CDC in announcing their data.

By the way, at this point in the flu season, most flu activity is in the Eastern part of the United States and overall levels are similar to past years.

Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D., is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Get his book, Sticky Customer Service.

Categories
Healthcare Call Centers

Google Trumps the CDC

By Peter DeHaan, PhD

Google announced that it knows about flu outbreaks before the CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) — really.

Peter DeHaan, Publisher and Editor of AnswerStat

It’s an amazingly simple, yet elegant solution. Using their vast database of user searches, Google has determined that they can predict and report on a flu outbreak up to two weeks before the (CDC), merely by watching for an increase in flu related searches.

According to the Website google.org/flutrends, “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.”

Check it out — especially the demo in the “How does this work” section — it’s really quite interesting.

By the way, at this point in the flu season, we’re doing better than most years.

Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D., is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Get his book, Sticky Customer Service.

Categories
Call Center

Robo Calling Should Screech to a Halt

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

Are you fed up with receiving “robo” (pre-recorded) calls?

Last year, in an effort to curb their use and appease public outrage, our elected officials required that an opt-out option be present on all pre-recorded calls.  Unfortunately, it was deemed both cumbersome and ineffective in curtailing the unwanted intrusions.

One problem was if the call has answered by an answering machine, the option of pressing a digit to opt-out was rendered ineffective.  Also, if a number was given to call, it would sometimes be cut off and not recorded.  Another issue was that opt-out messages at the beginning of calls might not be heard if the message began playing prematurely but if it was at the end, you were required to listen to the entire message before receiving opt-out instructions.  That was clever: offer the opt-out after the pitch.  That’s like the proverbial “shutting barn door after the horses get out.”

So, the public was still outraged and our politicians acted.  Now (effective September 1) consumer robo calls can only be legally made with prior written consent.  (Since the law addresses consumer calling, that means I can still be afflicted by them at work.)

However, the FTC says that calls “from politicians, banks, telephone carriers, and most charitable organizations,” plus “certain healthcare messages” are exempt.

Fines for failure to have written authorization are up to $16,000 per call.  That should slow them down a bit.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky series, including Sticky Sales and Marketing and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.