In this case study, Universal Knowledge has ensured IU Health representatives are able to provide patients with quality and timely knowledge at the point of need.
Shelby Smith, Director, IConnect Patient Access Center (IPAC), in USA said “Universal Knowledge has allowed the team to significantly improve the quality and service that we can provide, with a reduction in AHT and significant reductions in message errors and scheduling”.
The IConnect Patient Access Center within Indiana University Health, serves as IU Health Physicians central service centre and is a key source of general health and clinical program information and support for the organisation.
Highly trained service centre staff
Staff provide support for patients and provide direct phone support for primary and/or specialty clinical operations. Duties are wide ranging, including reviewing health information via Electronic Medical Record (EMR), scheduling appointments, registering patients to requesting medication refills, correspondence with clinical staff through message centre, and providing general triage support.
The need to provide immediate resolution to a customer’s needs requires instant access to a number of systems and, importantly, up to date clinic and physician information. Empowering the representatives with the information they needed, in the most efficient and effective way would maintain a high level of professionalism and continue to increase the quality of service. These were the key drivers for the selection of a knowledge management tool.
Why Choose Universal Knowledge?
Universal knowledge, a KPS knowledge management solution, was chosen due to its ability to capture and maintain up to date information, with a powerful natural language search and fragment technology enabling representatives to find up to date clinic and physician information at the touch of a button. This information could be found and utilised within seconds. Being able to migrate the existing information from an in house system and supplement this with additional information quickly and easily through in built templates, was also a key benefit.
Leveraging existing information
Universal Knowledge’s ability to capture information previously held in an in house SharePoint repository meant that all existing information could easily be leveraged, with minimal set up time. Longer documents did not require any rework as Universal presents the best matching ‘fragments’ of each document at the point of search, again significantly reducing deployment times.
Smith also commented that “Before we had Universal Knowledge, our representatives had to login to SharePoint, locate the correct document and then scroll through the document to find the answer. Now we simply ask a question and Universal Knowledge will return the answer immediately, saving us valuable time when dealing with our patients’.
Information at the point of need
Not only would Universal Knowledge be able to search more effectively, it has also proved invaluable in the automatic ‘push’ of important information with an audit trail.
Clinic information is constantly evolving and needs to be made available to the advisors as soon as possible. Universal Knowledge’s ‘Hot Topics’ and ‘Required Reading’ features means that representatives are notified when new information is available and can select a link to this information directly from their search homepage. Team ‘huddles’ could also be captured in the knowledge base, pushed out as a ‘must read’ communication and also still be referenceable within the knowledge base.
The ability for managers and trainers to track who has read important information is a valuable feature that reduces the amount of time required keeping a track on who is now knowledgeable about process / system changes.
Ease of Use
With representatives needing access to multiple systems such as EMR and scheduling tools, onboarding another system meant it was also important that the knowledge management tool was simple and required minimal training.
Users of the system were quickly remarking on how easy it was to use and new team members who came on board were able to quickly provide the required levels of service.
Styling of both the interface and the content to match the required colours/ logos and presentation styles was also quickly achieved, through the use of stylesheets and templates.
Links to other systems required by the team were also set up, directly from the knowledge base, to provide a central access point to all the tools a representative required to perform their duties.
Presenting the end user with a simple, familiar and easy to use interface was key to user adoption.
With less than 5 days of consultancy from KPS, the project was live and the benefits started to be realised from day 1.
The future
A knowledge base is a constantly evolving tool, as more information is added and results sets are refined and updated based on real life usage. The KPS knowledge management tool continues to be at the core of the
IConnect Patient Access Center and its usage has been extended to support additional services as they have come on board.
With increased speed to competency for new starters and no lengthy training times, the Patient Access Center is able to concentrate on continuing to provide much needed advice and guidance to those who need it.
Stakeholders are also able to view what information is provided to patients, ensuring that the quality and consistency of information can be easily maintained and will continue to evolve.
IU Health
Recognised as a top healthcare system by U.S.News and World Report for nearly two decades, IU Health is the most preferred system in Indiana and employs the most highly skilled physicians.
A partner of Indiana University School of Medicine, the US’s largest medical school, IU Health is guided by a strategic plan and clear mission, vision and values. The workforce is united under one goal – to improve the health of its patients and community through innovation and excellence in care, education, research and more.
Visit our Knowledge Management Page for more information about Universal Knowledge:
RQTech is a proud distribution partner of Knowledge Powered Solutions (KPS) and offer knowledge management software (Universal Knowledge) that helps organisations deliver operational efficiencies and at the same time improve customer services by providing immediate access to information at the point of need. Benefits include significant increases in productivity, reduction in operational costs, reduced training times and increased speed to competency for agents. Customers and stakeholders receive consistent answers to their queries and issues for improved service quality.
Universal Knowledge is being used as a business critical tool within help/service desks, call/contact centers, web self-service and shared service operations around the world (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Middle East). It is empowering agents to deal with a wider number of queries and enabling end users to self-serve 24 x 7.
