Call Center Management Featured Article
Workforce Optimization Can Help Smooth the Bumps for the Next ACA Enrollment Period
It’s no secret to anyone, regardless of political affiliation, that the roll-out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or “Obamacare”) has experienced troubles. Many of these problems stemmed from the contact centers set up or contracted to support enrollments. These contact centers, many of which were built from the ground up specifically to support the healthcare law, were not able to accurately predict how many calls they were likely to get, and as a result, some experienced overwhelming call volume they were simply not prepared to handle.
While many of the problems have been ironed out (at least until the next enrollment period opens), some call centers are still licking their wounds and hoping they’ll do better the next time around. According to a recent blog post by Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo, this is where call center technology, applied with some experience and smarts, can help prevent another open enrollment fiasco.
“According to one article, between 7,000 and 9,000 new customer service agents were hired just to handle phone and Web chat traffic for the exchanges run by the federal government,” wrote Ciarlo. “That is a heavy burden to place on contact centers, but one that can be managed with workforce optimization (WFO) software.”
According to Ciarlo, workforce optimization solutions can help healthcare call centers more accurately forecast and plan personnel needs by running “what if” scenarios and analyzing the results. The call centers can use the software to create simulated conditions that could occur, and prepare for them in advance. Ciarlo said the call monitoring component of WFO can also ensure that calls are being handled according to laws such as HIPAA and patient privacy regulations.
“WFO can also provide assurance to contact center managers (through call monitoring) that all calls are being handled in compliance with federal regulations and policies, which is a critical concern when dealing with a person’s health care history,” he wrote.
Many healthcare contact centers learned the hard way during the first enrollment period how and why things could go wrong. For the next enrollment period, which begins on November 15, companies can use those lessons of experience in conjunction with robust workforce optimization to ensure that the second time around, the ACA makes headlines for the right reasons and not the wrong ones.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi