How to Give Patients the Experience They Want Through the Contact Center
When a patient is dealing with a medical or billing concern, getting the right answers quickly is a crucial part of their experience with a healthcare provider. If a patient struggles to schedule an appointment or must keep explaining their situation over and over again on the phone, they are likely to become frustrated and might end up considering a different provider altogether.
The contact center plays an important role in the patient experience, but it’s not as straightforward as it once was. Some patients prefer to speak directly to a human, while others appreciate a quick response via chatbot. With the digitization of nearly every industry, patients are used to quick and easy experiences. Healthcare shouldn’t be any different.
At the AWS Summit Washington, DC 2025, panelists discussed how Amazon Connect can improve patient experiences and outcomes while streamlining staff workflows.
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In 2022, Jupiter Medical Center in Jupiter, Fla., selected Epic as its go-forward electronic health record solution. However, it was still using several apps in the pre-access space for scheduling, registration and authorization.
“It wasn’t a great patient satisfier, and we weren’t being a great partner to our physician clinic community,” said Shane Faullin, director of analytics and automation at Jupiter Medical Center.
In addition, the organization was using legacy communication solutions without any outbound functionality.
“We knew that after putting in a transformational product like Epic we needed something equally as powerful on the communication side to complete the solution,” he explained.
The organization chose to partner with Amazon Web Services, Faullin said, based on its ecosystem and development opportunities that would enable Jupiter Medical Center to build on its new foundation with new features and functionality and a plan to unlock the data the organization collects.
READ MORE: Transform healthcare customer service with Amazon Connect.
The organization set up an outbound dialing campaign with Amazon Connect. A dialer contacts the number on file without error and transfers the patient to an agent once they are on the line. Amazon Connect keeps track of how many times a patient has been called and documents steps taken. Having all of that information allows the organization to prioritize patients it hasn’t been able to contact. It can also determine if the organization has incorrect or outdated contact information.
When patients called Jupiter Medical Center’s former contact center setup, it took about 30 seconds to get through to an operator. The organization didn’t have data on why people called, and it wasn’t a good experience overall. Now, Amazon Connect routes callers appropriately. Whether they need directions to the hospital or they want to speak with someone, it will get them to the right place.
“We have seen an upward trend in our patient experience scores, and there aren’t as many complaints,” said Faullin, emphasizing that the contact center is the organization’s front door, and it’s incredibly important that patients have a phenomenal experience there.
Another benefit is that rather than having a patchwork of solutions across the main hospital campus and the organization’s outpatient clinics and physician practices, Amazon Connect creates a unified, seamless patient experience.
“If someone calls the main hospital or one of our other facilities, it will have a similar feel. They will hear the prompt and know they’ll be taken care of,” said Faullin.
Sunil Menon Senior Business Development Specialist for Customer Experience Engagement, AWS
Patients should have a great experience regardless of which channel they come through, said Sunil Menon, senior business development specialist for customer experience engagement at AWS. Whether a patient connects with a healthcare organization via voice, text message, chat or email, Amazon Lex can decipher their intent and provide self-service options such as appointment scheduling or help in finding specific information.
“If they don’t need to talk to an agent, they can quickly satisfy their needs and not have to wait in a queue,” Menon explained. “If they need to be escalated to an agent, everything that the patient has already communicated, including context and intent, will be carried through their journey. An omnichannel experience is foundational.”
The other side of the integration is the agent experience. If a patient is escalated to an agent, it’s important for them to know who is calling and why without having the patient repeat themselves. Having the information automatically available when the agent picks up the call cuts down on the cognitive overload the agent would face if they had to navigate multiple screens or ask the patient the same questions again.
UP NEXT: How can healthcare organizations reimagine their contact centers?
“It’s important to have contextual and personalized information to empower agents to provide high-level services,” said Menon.
He commended Jupiter Medical Center on the work it has done with outbound campaigns, which, he explained, provide a great way to nudge patients to adhere to their medications after a hospitalization to prevent readmission.
“That nudge can reduce preventable readmissions by 25%. That’s $262,000 for every 100 beds,” he said, adding that the organization can also gauge a patient’s sentiment to determine whether they might be in need of therapy.
GenAI can also power in-app web calling and chatbots in addition to summing up conversations between patients and providers.
“It all starts by figuring out the right use case and how it applies to your organization,” said Menon.
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