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Case Study: SSM Healthcare
Sip Coffee while in Your Slippers: How to Succeed with Agents at Home
Organization
SSM Health Care (SSMHC) is the first healthcare organization ever to receive the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. Sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and based in St. Louis, Missouri, SSMHC is one of the largest Catholic health systems in the country. SSMHC system owns, manages and is affiliated with 20 acute care hospitals and two nursing homes in four states: Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
More than 5,000 affiliated physicians and 24,000 employees work together to provide a wide range of services, including rehabilitation, pediatrics, home health, hospice, residential and skilled nursing care. Health-related businesses include information systems and support services such as materials management and home care. SSMHC also owns an interest in Premier Medical Insurance Group Inc., one of Wisconsin’s largest health maintenance organizations.
Challenge
SSM Health Care developed a Teleworking contact center in response to corporate objectives to improve clinical outcomes, enhance satisfaction of patients, physicians and employees, increase productivity, and reduce cost.
Challenges to incubating the infant Teleworking service included:
- Agent skills and experience
- IT support
- Transition from group to solo agent: how to maintain the SSMHC culture
- Regulatory concerns: federal, state, local
- Distribution of work
- Accessibility of resource materials at home
- Intradepartmental and system-wide communication
Solution
Bob Jaeger, Director Health Information Services, employed Sharp Focus® software as the foundation for the Teleworking contact center. An innovator and national pioneer of Teleworking in a healthcare contact center, SSM Health Care’s Teleworking experience serves as a benchmark for the healthcare industry. They have documented outcomes in the areas of employee satisfaction, quality and productivity, as well as cost reduction.
Results
Improved employee satisfaction:
- From 57% "largely satisfied" before Teleworking to 94% after Teleworking
Improved productivity:
- Combined Quality scores on the department’s QA Grid increased while call length decreased
- Combined quality scores include greetings and demographics, clinical assessment, clinical judgment, clinical communication, documentation, and customer service
Reduced cost:
- Overall call center expenses were reduced by nearly 30% over three years
Additional outcomes:
- Improved efficiency with integration of Sharp Focus into terminal server applications
- Gradual internal acceptance
- Better inter-departmental communication
- More able to attract highly qualified pediatric nurses
- Tardiness reduced
Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Make a persuasive internal presentation
- Present Teleworking as part of the solution for pressing current needs such as improved bottom line, space availability, productivity improvement, employee satisfaction
- Provide a financial pro forma to substantiate the above, work in advance with your finance champion to assure credibility
- Connect with key players in advance: could Teleworking free up space and/or improve employee satisfaction for their department?
- Suggest a small pilot program which maximizes use of existing technology and resources
Lesson 2: Anticipate resistance
- Employees...not at all: employee satisfaction increases dramatically with Teleworking
- Top management...not usually: costs may decrease, productivity may increase
- Middle management...this is the battle! Improved employee retention, easier to recruit hard-to fill positions, human resources issues are minimal
Lesson 3: Start where you are
- What you do in the beginning with change as you migrate
- Don’t miss the opportunity to just begin…from wherever your organization is at present
Lesson 4: Decide what you will and will not fund
- What organizations will pay for varies significantly
- Negotiate what works best, and do it the same way for everyone!
Lesson 5: Move with the organization
- Ride the horse in the direction it is currently going. While Teleworking may have been an unsupported endeavor in the past, the financial advantages of Teleworking are making it increasingly attractive
- Many IT departments now support Teleworking in various formats
Lesson 6: Don’t over promise
- Don’t make a promise. Build and activate a plan.
Lesson 7: Call on Teleworking in a disaster
- "Telework plays a significant role in business continuity… several participants who had employees in New York City after 9/11 or in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina mentioned how their employees were able to work immediately after these tragedies because of the programs they had in place." – "The Telework Coalition" March 9, 2006 www.TelCoa.org
Lesson 8: Ask key questions about technology
- Who will be the project champion in IT? In Telecom? Which vendor or vendor’s technology will we use? Is the technology scalable? Will it support additional team members? What technology will be provided for home workers?
Lesson 9: Address key operations issues
- Make Teleworking voluntary, don’t push; Have a formal agreement that the Teleworking employee signs; Develop written policies and procedures on Teleworking and make them accessible; Consider a 90-day trial period for each Teleworker; and Report outcomes to project champions in IT and Telecom then to the entire leadership team with the support of IT and Telecom
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