As part of its push to make health care solutions simple to understand, easy to access and meaningful in outcomes, one of VNS Health’s key goals is to seamlessly coordinate the various clinical and support services it delivers to its consumers. “We want people to experience us as ‘One VNS Health,’ no matter how many different parts of the organization they’re working with,” notes Dan Savitt, VNS Health’s President and CEO.
In summer 2022, the organization took another major stride toward that goal with the launch of the VNS Health Hub—an online portal containing records of every patient, client and plan member’s interactions with VNS Health. The Hub brings together data from nine separate software systems, allowing VNS Health’s contact center agents to quickly retrieve any information that might be needed to assist a given caller. The software platform also records the consumer’s phone calls to the contact center and archives all email exchanges within VNS Health regarding any issues the consumer might be having.
During an in-house pilot of the Hub earlier in 2022, the new platform got high marks from participating team members. One contact center agent noted, “The Hub is simple to navigate and makes searching for a consumer easier and faster.” Having the portal available also improved first-call resolution rate—meaning that a contact center agent is able to resolve a caller’s issue during their initial encounter.
“What I’m excited about is that our Hub platform truly puts the consumer at the center of the experience, by enabling our support team to quickly get callers to the person best positioned to meet their needs, right on that first call,” says Michael Bernstein, Executive Vice President and Chief Experience Officer.
The new system also makes it easier for contact center agents working with a certain part of VNS Health—Home Care, for example, or the Health Plans—to “cross over” and assist colleagues in a different line of business during times of high call volume.
“Many of our contact center agents are trained to provide cross-business support where needed,” explains Nancy Vitale, Vice President, Contact Center Operations. “But to be effective in that role, an agent has to be able to access a caller’s full history without wading through different databases. The Hub lets them do that.”
The Hub’s launch is the latest in a series of VNS Health consumer support enhancements. In 2021, the organization consolidated all of its support teams under a single management team and installed a cutting-edge phone system in its newly combined contact center. “All of these changes have a common objective,” says Senior Vice President Dan Wallis, who oversees the centralized consumer support function, “and that is to provide a consistently excellent experience for our patients, clients and members.”
