In this Article —
- Healthcare Compliance and Speech Analytics
- Patient Satisfaction and Speech Analytics
- Key Performance Indicators
- Behavioral Analysis in Healthcare
- The Next Level of Sophistication
Healthcare Compliance & Speech Analytics
As possibly the most regulated industry there is, for healthcare, compliance is a major concern. For this reason, it is essential that healthcare businesses have systems in place to ensure patient privacy, data security and care monitoring. The necessity to improve these standards has many healthcare businesses turning to creative solutions.
When you think of technology that could facilitate compliance efforts in healthcare, speech analytics is not likely high on the list. However, you may be surprised to learn that many healthcare providers are turning to this technology to deal with compliance issues and as a buffer against potential legal action. speech analytics technology is well suited to assist the healthcare industry in meeting and exceeding their compliance, security and quality assurance needs.
It’s common knowledge that call monitoring with speech analytics is a powerful tool for quality assurance, yet it can also be indispensable in negating litigation arising from patient disputes. When medical care or advice is provided, this technology can eliminate the likelihood of compliance errors due to incorrect or false claims. It can facilitate both care and financial processes in the healthcare industry by providing an authentic record of communications. Having these records makes it easy to trace claims back to their point of origin, especially given that searching through call logs is a fast and efficient process.
Employing speech analytics technology not only helps to safeguard the healthcare organization – It protects the patients.
- Reduced Liability
- High-Level Data Security
- Simple and Efficient Auditing
- HIPAA and HITECH Compliance
- Data-Rich Report Generation for Training, Evaluation and Process Enhancement
How It Works
You may already be familiar with some of the ways speech analytics systems can impact performance: improving coaching, creating efficiencies, supplying clear trend data and process analysis, but there is a lot more to be said for how you can utilize this technology. The VoizTrail®
speech analytics platform system processes audio in two separate channels, one for the agent and one for the consumer, so analysis can dial in on both perspectives offering the highest level of emotional intelligence. Aside from providing agents with better training, this provides you with the data necessary for targeted mentoring. Your healthcare system is given insight into not just the weaknesses of individual agents that need improvement but also their strengths that can be exploited. For instance, are one of your agents particularly skilled in talking a consumer out of a dispute? Our speech analytics platform can help you identify that.
Bottom line…The best speech analytics platforms will analyze spoken content for keywords and emotional cues such as pitch, tone, and volume. It will be able to measure the space in-between, the length of the call and even “dead air.” The resultant audio data is captured and stored so that it can be searched and used to generate critical reports.
Patient Satisfaction & Speech Analytics
A proper speech analytics platform can give healthcare providers direct control of the patient satisfaction. It can provide a clear impression of patients’ needs as well as the service areas that need improvement. Additionally, the platform should offer a variety of fail-safes for patient data management and protection, while automating processes which would otherwise be prone to human error, including the ability to:
- Record/Monitor 100% of patient interactions.
- Access custom-quality scorecards and detailed reports.
- Make use of advanced keywords and phrase monitoring.
- Program unique compliance parameters.
- Predict behavior with emotional analysis
- Use two-channel audio for analysis of both staff and patients.
- Draw on trend data that is presented in straightforward reports.
- Provide advanced storage and security technology.
- Automatically redact sensitive patient data.
Key Performance Indicators
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. “
– Peter Drucker, “The Business Thinker” Management Consultant, Educator & Author
Key Performance Indicators, (KPIs), are an indispensable tool in measuring the successes and failures of an organization overall and/or within individual departments.
KPIs for Patient Satisfaction
Because the price healthcare providers have to pay for dissatisfied patients is high, the measuring of patient expectations of health care is central to improving patient satisfaction and delivering patient-centered care.
While calls, chats, emails and records of physicians and nursing staff can be recorded, uploaded, stored and analyzed, some of the most overlooked departments for accessing patient satisfaction are Registration, Scheduling, Insurance, Financial Assistance, Billing and 3rd-party vendors. All are significant contributors to patient satisfaction. All feed into the collections, conversions, critical processes, productivity, accuracy and patient satisfaction domains that are standard healthcare KPI benchmarks.
In the chart below, we demonstrate a few simple examples of the types of compliance elements and keyword(s)/phrase(s) that can be mapped into the speech analytics platform so communications can be monitored for adherence to both industry regulations and your healthcare facility’s internal policies as to the standard of care that patients should receive from all departments:
| Registration |
| Did agent ask patient to verify the patient’s full name? |
| Did agent ask patient to verify date of birth? |
| Etc. |
| Scheduling |
| Did agent schedule / reschedule / confirm the appointment correctly? |
| Did agent confirm patients’ preferred methods for future communication? |
| Etc. |
| Insurance |
| Did agent explain the insurance benefits? |
| Did agent inform patient out-of-pocket costs may vary from estimates? |
| Etc. |
| Financial Assistance |
| Did agent refer patient to a financial counselor? |
| Did agent inform patient about the programs & grants available? |
| Etc. |
| Payment |
| Did agent offer to set up a payment plan? |
| Did agent provide payment options? |
| Etc. |
It all begins and ends with communication – The speech analytics platform can collect, sort, and report the findings needed to determine whether a healthcare facility has succeeded or failed to meet their KPIs. It can both monitor compliance of industry regulations as well as ensure that internal policies are being adhered to.
Behavioral Analytics in Healthcare
Though the study of consumer behavior has been popular for many years, the application of behavioral analysis to consumer behavior is a fairly new endeavor. The capability of modern technology to utilize big data has propelled interest in applying behavioral analysis to business processes and redefining the concept of patient engagement. While the aim of applied behavioral analysis for therapy and business may be drastically different, the processes and core principals remain very much the same.
Behavioral Analysis Module
Early on, KG Hawes, the developers of VoizTrail® Speech Analytics, developed the first-of-its-kind Behavioral Analysis module, one that organizes your patient data to offer insights into a patient’s behavior. Within the module, patients can be grouped into behavior types. This gives you valuable information about the patient experience and what drives their behavior, so that your healthcare system can target strategies that will generate the best patient results.
The behavioral analysis module also allows the user to create behavior templates and compare various groups. With this functionality, you can compare behavioral analysis of patient behavior groups, client groups and even individual representatives or departments. Behavior comparisons allow your facility to discover commonalities and differences that can be used for strategy development and support data-driven decision making.
One of the most valuable features of the behavioral analysis module is the “results” screen. Here you can track the call outcomes for each behavior type. With VoizTrail®, you finally have a simple way to link patient behaviors to results, taking the guesswork out of call drivers, while giving your facility the ability to accurately predict future behavior.
The application of behavioral analysis also gives healthcare facilities a simple method for creating brand equity. Speech analytics makes it easy to discover the voice of your healthcare brand, and tailor consumer experiences to get the best results. This strategy fulfills the cycle of success; by optimizing consumer relationships, the agency sees better returns and reduced repeated calls which results in maximizing ROI while lowering overhead. This success is passed on to your patient, further strengthening your healthcare system as a whole.
The Next Level of Sophistication
Emotional and behavioral intelligence is the cornerstone to improved consumer interactions. Don’t let inferior speech analytics vendors waste your precious voice data by leaving out this next level of sophistication and insight. The VoizTrail® Speech Analytics platform brings the power of behavioral science integrated with unsurpassed data analysis in our Behavioral Science Module, and exposes hidden emotional data through agent, team, and call scoring.
Video Introduction to VoizTrail®
