College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL.
UI Health, Chicago, IL, USA.
Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2022 Nov 22;79(Suppl 4):S115-S122. doi: 10.1093/ajhp/zxac166.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic provided an opportunity to change how health-system specialty pharmacy (HSSP) call center operations are organized. This article describes the steps taken to virtualize the current operations of a specialty pharmacy services call center and evaluate the impact.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the normal provision of healthcare necessitated that HSSPs drastically modify existing procedures to both accommodate the expectations of staff and overcome the many barriers to care being experienced by patients. To fully understand and improve upon the workflow processes of an HSSP call center, a combination of qualitative feedback from patients, quantitative claims data, and quality metrics was evaluated. This project was divided into 3 phases: phase 1 (baseline) from July 2020 through August 2020, phase 2 (implementation) from September 2020 through December 2020, and phase 3 (analysis) from January 2021 through March 2021. Phase 1 included baseline review of workflow. Phase 2 encompassed development of new standard operating procedures (SOPs), making critical decisions to promote virtual capabilities of staff, and collaboration with team members to increase efficiency of current workflow. During phase 3, an evaluation of operational and service-related metrics was conducted to determine the impact of phase 2 workflow changes. Optimization of the specialty pharmacy call center allowed for staff members to transition to remote work to minimize exposure risk and prioritize the safety of patients and team members.
The call center team was able to transition to fully remote operations, implement new SOPs, and undergo significant workflow changes to optimize performance while still maintaining all call center metric goals and without increased complaints from patients or errors. This approach allowed for added staff value and safety and improved organization during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行提供了一个改变卫生系统专科药房（HSSP）呼叫中心运营组织方式的机会。本文介绍了将专科药房服务呼叫中心的现有运营虚拟化的步骤，并评估了其影响。
COVID-19 大流行的爆发及其对正常医疗保健服务的影响，使得 HSSP 必须彻底修改现有的程序，既要满足员工的期望，又要克服患者面临的许多护理障碍。为了全面了解和改进 HSSP 呼叫中心的工作流程，评估了患者的定性反馈、定量理赔数据和质量指标的组合。该项目分为 3 个阶段：第 1 阶段（基线）为 2020 年 7 月至 8 月，第 2 阶段（实施）为 2020 年 9 月至 12 月，第 3 阶段（分析）为 2021 年 1 月至 3 月。第 1 阶段包括工作流程的基线审查。第 2 阶段包括制定新的标准操作程序（SOP），做出促进员工虚拟能力的关键决策，并与团队成员合作，提高当前工作流程的效率。在第 3 阶段，对运营和服务相关指标进行了评估，以确定第 2 阶段工作流程变更的影响。优化专科药房呼叫中心使员工能够过渡到远程工作，以最大程度降低暴露风险，并优先考虑患者和团队成员的安全。
呼叫中心团队能够成功过渡到完全远程运营，实施新的 SOP，并进行重大的工作流程变更，以优化绩效，同时仍然保持所有呼叫中心指标目标，并且没有增加患者投诉或错误。这种方法在 COVID-19 大流行期间为员工增加了价值和安全性，并提高了组织的效率。
