Healthcare is a people-first industry, and while this typically means a heavy reliance on face-to-face interaction, that isn’t always possible. With more patient interactions happening over the phone, the quality of those calls can significantly impact the perceived level of care. Conversational AI in healthcare is changing how medical contact centers operate. By implementing AI and quality assurance tools, healthcare providers can now consistently deliver accurate information quickly while maintaining the empathy patients deserve.
Artificial intelligence solutions like chatbots and voice assistants are helping to streamline administrative tasks and improve patient triage. Observe.AI is proud to be at the forefront of this process, providing a full range of tools that support better coaching, compliance, and performance for healthcare call centers.
Common Challenges for Healthcare Contact Centers
Unlike retail, healthcare contact centers face a higher level of scrutiny when it comes to quality and customer service since the stakes are inherently higher. However, even under ideal circumstances, only a small number of patient interactions can be manually reviewed per day, leaving potential compliance issues and service gaps undetected.
Federal compliance laws and internal policies can change rapidly, and agents may be unsure how to handle protected health data, leading to hesitation during calls or potential regulatory violations. This uncertainty, especially when paired with inconsistent training and coaching, creates even worse confusion about performance expectations and best practices for patient interactions.
Additionally, the long feedback cycles in traditional QA systems mean agents could receive critiques on calls that happened weeks ago. Feedback that old may not hold much weight. Even if it is still relevant, this timeline makes it difficult for agents to recall specific circumstances and behaviors, impairing their ability to improve.
Traditional QA vs. Transparent QA in Healthcare
Traditional quality assurance in healthcare contact centers often functions as a closed system, with managers randomly selecting a small percentage of calls to evaluate against predetermined metrics. These evaluations often happen behind closed doors, with agents receiving feedback days, if not weeks, after the fact. The small sample size also means that many compliance risks or coaching opportunities could be missed completely. Similarly, it could reveal false patterns that do not exist in the broader scheme of things.
AI-powered QA, on the other hand, analyzes 100% of calls, with quality monitoring results shared openly and immediately with agents. This approach creates a more collaborative environment where agents can review their own calls, understand how they are scored, and participate actively in improving patient health. Comprehensive coverage means that no compliance risks slip through the cracks, and the data-driven approach removes subjective biases.
How AI Improves Call Quality and Compliance
Implementing artificial intelligence in healthcare contact centers can have life-changing implications. Using conversational AI systems to analyze patient interactions, healthcare organizations can identify compliance risks, improve agent performance, and enhance the overall patient experience without increasing administrative work.
Monitor Every Call for Compliance Risks
AI systems like Observe.AI can analyze 100% of patient interactions using natural language processing (NLP) to automatically flag missed disclaimers, potential HIPAA violations, or risky disclosures of health information. This monitoring creates a safety net that traditional monitoring simply cannot match.
Give Agents Better, More Timely Feedback
With Auto QA, healthcare contact centers can transition from monthly evaluations to near-real-time coaching. Agents receive feedback while conversations are still fresh in their minds, making it easier for them to improve and be more effective in handling everything from appointment booking to follow-up phone calls.
Involve Agents in the QA Process
Creating a democratic quality assurance process through dispute workflows, acknowledgment features, and shared scorecards builds trust between agents, managers, and healthcare professionals. When agents can see their evaluations and participate in the review process, they become more invested in improving their performance and ability to meet specific patient needs.
Coach More Effectively Across Teams
Having accurate data compiled by AI allows managers to create specific, targeted coaching sessions to address patterns in their healthcare operations and teams’ patient interactions. This approach helps healthcare staff improve their skills and quality of service while reducing compliance risks when discussing patient data or helping patients reschedule appointments.
How Better QA Leads to Better Patient Outcomes
Healthcare contact centers that implement transparent, AI-driven quality assurance aren’t just interested in seeing better operational metrics. They see improved patient outcomes.
As agents receive consistent, fair feedback on their handling of patient interactions, they develop greater confidence in addressing complex healthcare inquiries. This improved performance directly translates to more accurate information being provided to patients, fewer callbacks needed to resolve issues, and reduced frustration on both sides of the phone.
The datasets collected through comprehensive AI-driven QA also identify common concerns and recurring issues, allowing contact centers to proactively address them before they affect patient satisfaction. This coordination ultimately leads to improved health outcomes since patients are receiving timely care and benefitting from consistent medical advice.
Take Affordable Care, a dental support organization, as a real-world example. When they adopted Observe.AI’s AI-powered voice QA, they improved call monitoring coverage by 5X and reduced compliance errors by 40%. This not only helped coach agents more effectively but also made sure patients were receiving accurate, timely, and empathetic communication, key drivers of better healthcare delivery experiences.
How Observe.AI Makes QA Better in Healthcare
At the core of Observe.AI is powerful automation powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our conversational AI platform allows for 100% call coverage and automated QA, meaning every call interaction, from scheduling specialist appointments to answering questions about medication side effects, is transcribed, analyzed, and evaluated. This visibility gives healthcare organizations a deep understanding of patient-agent conversations and brings issues to light in real time.
Our HIPAA-compliant transcription and analysis tools protect sensitive patient information while providing valuable insights to improve communication and reduce risk on every call, from medication refills to scheduling appointments. With built-in dispute and feedback sharing tools, your agents are no longer left wondering how and why they were scored the way they were. Agents can review their scores immediately after each call, defend their decisions, and actively participate in their professional development.
To support ongoing development, our coaching hub empowers managers with actionable insights to guide each session. We help managers identify patterns across teams and develop ways to improve patient care and operational efficiency. This way, targeted coaching sessions become more effective, boosting agent confidence and performance, and ultimately improving the patient experience.
Improving the Patient Experience Through Conversational AI
Our AI assistants and AI chatbots handle complex healthcare sector communications while reducing the administrative burden on staff. The platform documents every interaction for quality purposes, making it an ideal solution to reduce wait times, improve user experience, and optimize internal healthcare systems.
Our conversational AI solutions, including virtual assistants and AI agents, allow healthcare contact centers to manage patient communications with empathetic, human-like interactions. As patient engagement continues to be a critical factor in overall health outcomes, investing in sophisticated conversational AI tools becomes not just an operational decision but a clinical one as well.
Find a Healthcare AI Voice Agent
At Observe.AI, we are always developing new use cases for our technology across the healthcare industry, from automating repetitive tasks like answering FAQs to complex symptom-checking services. Our recent advancements in generative AI have further enhanced the abilities of our conversational AI systems and bots to provide more human-like responses than ever while maintaining regulatory compliance. The benefits of conversational AI technology affect every part of the patient journey, expanding self-service options while ensuring that human agents are always available when needed.
Conversational AI for healthcare is a significant advancement in how patient care is performed. By partnering with Observe.AI, healthcare contact centers can transform their operations and provide exceptional care and support to every patient who calls.
