[September 27, 2012]

Headcounts Are Key to Successful Medical Information Call Centers

Medical information call centers require the proper headcounts and necessary budgets to provide essential support to physicians and patients, according to a new study by Cutting Edge Information.

The study, "Medical Information Teams and Call Center Management," found that medical information call center staffing ranged considerably depending on the centers' sizes. Surveyed companies' headcounts ranged from as few as 1 FTE to as many as 45 FTEs across pharmaceutical and medical device companies. However, the study's analysis of call load per employee and budget per employee showed considerably more comparisons across call centers of varying sizes.

"Medical information call centers are often the first contact between a pharmaceutical company and the physicians and patients who use its products," said Ryan McGuire, research team leader at Cutting Edge Information. "They answer these two important groups' critical questions and they cannot succeed without the headcounts and budgets necessary to meet customers' needs."

For many of the surveyed companies, call center employees handled between 100 and 200 calls per month. Surveyed companies based staffing decisions off of these workloads. These companies also typically funded call centers with $100,000 to $200,000 per FTE, again basing staffing decision off of these numbers.

New product launches are the primary drivers for increasing medical information headcounts. Product launches require several activities to take place within the medical information team, including:

• Conducting new training for responding to those medical inquiries
• Preparing new standard response documents
• Expanding an existing call center or bringing a whole new call center online

"Medical Information Teams and Call Center Management" can be found on the Cutting Edge Information website: http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/research/medical-affairs/information-teams/. This study explores in-house medical information teams and call centers and their best practices. Medical information executives have use the study to:

• Understand and manage the entire medical information function from internal operations to call center operations
• Manage a growing number of medical information responsibilities including call centers, library services and copy review
• Leverage medical information teams' capabilities to support other internal functions

For more information about medical information and medical affairs benchmarking research, contact Elio Evangelista at 919-403-6583.

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