Talk about Teamwork! Our Call Center Just Scored a Perfect 100%!
INSIDE HEALTH PLANS with John Burke
Welcome to my new monthly column, “Inside Health Plans.” I’m thrilled to have this opportunity each month to share with you all the terrific work that’s happening these days within Health Plans.
Which is a lot!
To name just a few things… we’re acquiring health plans and expanding our presence across upstate New York… we’re opening walk-in Neighborhood Offices in underserved neighborhoods… and we’re enhancing our member experience.
How, you may ask, are we able to accomplish so much? Here’s a big reason: Teamwork!
Since I joined VNS Health in February, I’ve been so incredibly impressed by the dedication and collaborative effort of everyone who works on our Health Plans. It takes exceptional teamwork to administer the type of plans we provide and help people live their best lives in their homes and communities, where they belong. (By the way, that includes an increasing number of homes and communities in upstate New York!)
In today’s column, I’d like to spotlight a team that’s super important when it comes to ensuring our Health Plan members have an excellent consumer experience. And that’s the agents and supervisors in our call center who provide phone support to our members.
Our call center agents and supervisors are absolutely essential to the quality of our health plans. If a plan member has an issue with their coverage or a question about their plan benefits, or needs an item of medical equipment delivered, our call center agents field—and resolve—their calls.
Now, here’s something you may not know about our call center agents: Their performance is evaluated regularly by the federal and state governments, and this performance contributes directly to our plans’ Stars ratings (the scores used to rate each plan’s overall quality).
In fact, our call center was recently audited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The audit looked at how our call center agents did with prospective members who called to learn more about the benefits of our medical plans—including whether the callers got connected to interpreters when they requested one, and how accurate our agents (and the interpreters) were at conveying the requested information.
The results were pretty amazing.
Our call center team members scored a perfect 100% in connecting the callers with translation support, and a near-perfect 99% on the accuracy of their information!
This is a tremendous accomplishment, and I want to congratulate everyone involved—including Contact Center Manager Cristiana Coronado, Supervisor Yerika Edwards, and their 19 Contact Center agents, who understood how important what they do is to our Stars ratings. Kudos also to Director Gisela Polo, who oversees Contact Center functions for our Health Plans, and to Nancy Vitale, VP, Contact Center Operations, who runs our entire Contact Center.
Like I said, it takes great teamwork to run high-quality Health Plans for vulnerable populations—and we’ve got some of the best team members in the business.
One final thing: I hope you got a chance to read last week’s Frontline story about one of our MLTC members who’s receiving round-the-clock care from our HHAs. What I love about this story is that it’s a great example of how two teams in our organization—Health Plans and Personal Care—are working together to provide a safety net for a vulnerable individual so that she can continue to live at home and in her community. Here’s a link to the story.
Until next month…
To read the first column from INSIDE PROVIDER SERVICES with David Rosales, click here.
