As mentioned in our last blog, Providing Critical Information During the Pandemic, the TTHM team delivered critical information and answered pressing questions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Our event moderators and operators assisted healthcare clients by reaching out directly to Medicare and Medicaid recipients for live virtual forums over the phone.
In my own life, I was navigating the pandemic in my home state as well as moving across the country while working remotely as an operator for TTHM. It was fascinating to be able to provide information for people in multiple states, while traveling through multiple states, about how to stay safe from this novel virus. Part of my job became calming down event participants if they were alone and unable to find the information they needed. I felt safe the whole time as I worked remotely from my mobile home office while living a nomadic lifestyle.
Continuing our dynamic work producing teletownhall forums for healthcare clients allows us to help with retention, demystify benefit coverage, and instantly connect recipients to member services for personalized attention. As an operator, I have a script full of information at my fingertips that I can easily relay to the caller over the phone at a pace they can follow.
Since we are able to interact and hear one another, if they have any comprehension issues, I can take my time and make sure they have accurately received phone numbers, websites, or any other information they need. Some folks are thrilled just to have a live person on the phone with them and they can become quite chatty. If the queue of callers waiting to submit a question is not too large, I enjoy lending a compassionate ear to someone who may live alone, have a limited support system, family that they don’t see often enough, or a medical issue that they are concerned about. If I don’t have enough information to help them, I also have the ability to mark them for a follow-up from the member services team to make sure they get what they need in a timely manner.
With a slew of options available to add-on to the teletownhall event, the outreach for our healthcare clients can begin before the event and continue to be helpful after the event is over, with patients feeling heard and taken care of like never before.
Members can sign up for the event early using web registration, or TTHM can send p2p text alerts on our client’s behalf to inform them of an upcoming telephone townhall meeting. During the virtual forum, callers can participate in polls of the client’s choosing to keep the audience engaged and acknowledged. They can also talk to an operator like me to have information repeated for them that they may have missed, or to pose a question to the experts we have on the line. Our healthcare clients do their best to answer as many live questions as possible during the remote forum, giving credit to the name and city of each caller. If a question is too personal or detailed, we also have patchthrough options available so the customer can easily transfer to member services to have their issues addressed directly.
Some of our clients ask us to transcribe post-event voicemails, and the process we use allows for easy escalation of urgent issues to make sure the customer’s needs are met. It also makes our clients’ jobs easier by deleting pocket dials and accidental voicemails and marking callbacks and sales leads for ease of followup. We even have translators to transcribe voicemails left in Spanish. All of this is done with respect to regulatory compliance. TTHM Operators are all trained to follow all HIPAA regulations and guidelines when interacting with event participants and delivering post-event reporting.
All of these capabilities are available for any virtual town hall and many are included automatically. Contact us for a demo of our tele town hall events and let us help you keep your healthcare recipients engaged, informed and satisfied. Check out our next blog in this series about compliance and how TTHM keeps clients in the clear.
About Becca:
As a TTHM Operator since 2020, Becca has collected thousands of e-newsletter opt-ins and processed even more live questions for a myriad of telephone town hall events. Producing forums for school districts, political campaigns, medical insurance providers, labor unions, and cities around the country has helped Becca to gain a wealth of knowledge from client speakers and event participants. Becca works from her home office on Florida’s Gulf Coast, but she has produced live forums while working remotely from Colorado, Montana, Iowa and lots of other places in between!