In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, accelerated largely by developing technology and the Covid-19 pandemic, organizations face mounting pressure to improve patient care while reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Centralizing one’s customer and business operations is one approach that can lead to such significant improvements in service quality, cost-effectiveness, and overall organizational performance—and leading these efforts is the global healthcare BPO market, which is expected to reach $626.6 billion by 2029, from $395.3 billion in 2024.
Let’s explore how healthcare companies can navigate this transformative journey.
Understand What Your Organization Needs
The first step in any centralization effort is a thorough assessment of existing operations. Healthcare companies need to first map out current processes across all departments and their specific pain points and inefficiencies. A thorough evaluation of one’s technological infrastructure, as well as current staffing capacity and skills, is also important to get a good view of what aspects of one’s operations need to be centralized.
Take note, however, that not all operations are suitable for centralization. Healthcare companies should consider prioritizing functions that are repetitive and can be standardized, require specialized skills or technology, benefit from economies of scale, and are not location-dependent.
Common areas for centralization in healthcare are practice administration, which includes HR, facilities, and payroll; patient access and communications, which is focused on customer service and patient support; revenue and insurance management, which covers claims processing and billing; and provider and clinical support, which includes data management and analytics, sales and sales enablement, and even triage nursing services.
After mapping out your healthcare organization’s current state and needs, define specific goals for centralization. These will likely include: improving patient satisfaction and engagement; reducing operational costs; enhancing data accuracy, accessibility, and interoperability; streamlining administrative processes; and ensuring regulatory compliance. Whatever your objectives are, it is important to ensure that they are clear and measurable, as these will guide the centralization strategy and help track progress.
Implementing Your Centralization Strategy
Centralizing one’s customer and business operations requires careful and strategic implementation. Consider a phased approach to ease your organization into it, using a clear and sustainable roadmap of your implementation stages. Pilot projects are helpful for organizations to test and refine their strategy.
Cultural and change management aspects must also be taken into consideration; a comprehensive change management strategy, therefore, should also be developed. It’s highly important to communicate the benefits of centralization to all stakeholders, and to provide staff with adequate training and support throughout the transition.
Ensuring a smooth implementation also requires healthcare organizations to establish a governance team to oversee the entire centralized operations structure. Management needs to have clearly defined roles and responsibilities and should implement key performance metrics to track progress and success.
During the centralization process, many healthcare organizations find value in partnering with external specialists. These partners can provide industry best practices and benchmarks, specialized technology and infrastructure, skilled employees for centralized functions, scalability to handle volume fluctuations, and continuous process improvement methodologies.
By tapping into external expertise, healthcare companies can accelerate their centralization efforts and avoid common pitfalls. A 2022 Black Book Market Research survey found that 72% of healthcare providers prefer to partner with external experts for centralization initiatives, especially surrounding data management.
Whether with an external partner or not, healthcare organizations centralizing their business and customer operations should be prepared to adjust their processes based on initial outcomes and changing needs. Gather feedback regularly from patients and staff to assess the impact of your centralization efforts.
Centralizing customer and business operations can be a game-changer for healthcare organizations, and with a well-designed strategy, companies can position themselves for success in an increasingly competitive and complex industry. Whether leveraging internal resources or partnering with external experts, the key is to approach centralization as an initiative aligned with your organization’s overall mission and vision.
At OP360, we’ve supported healthcare companies by enabling them to outsource administrative tasks such as billing, patient scheduling, administrative support, human resources, information technology, insurance claims processing and more. Industry leaders in medical supplies, specialty providers, dental practices, and med spas rely on the expertise of our nearly 5,500 tech-enabled and skilled associates who are well-versed in the work required to boost efficiency and improve patient care.
We leverage advanced software and technology to streamline workflows, drive productivity, and reduce administrative overhead for healthcare providers. As a result, providers can spend more time focusing on optimizing financial performance, clinical excellence, and improving patient satisfaction. Chat with us today to discover how we can deliver a better way of improving patient outcomes while maintaining your organization’s operational excellence.
