Digital Workspace

How Can Healthcare Organizations Reimagine Their Contact Centers?

Leveraging the right technologies can provide patients with a seamless journey via touchpoints along the digital continuum of care.

Jeff Kula

Jeff Kula is the Director of Healthcare Sales at CDW.

Scott Merritt

Scott Merritt is a patient experience architect at CDW with more than 20 years of experience in the contact center space.

For decades, health systems have relied on traditional contact center models — primarily phone-based — to manage patient interactions. That generally worked. But in recent years, with changing consumer expectations and a major health crisis that overwhelmed many organizations’ call systems, it was time to rethink contact centers and move away from being locked into on-premises solutions.

When it comes to modern contact center strategies for healthcare, organizations have been looking for scalability and resiliency, which many have found through cloud-based solutions. Amazon Connect, for instance, allows organizations to tap into a partner’s ability to track and update its contact center platform with better frequency, something that’s difficult for many healthcare IT departments to sustain due to staffing or workload constraints.

Organizations are also trying to engage with their consumers through multiple channels, not just voice. Those consumers have become more familiar with a centralized, omnichannel experience in the retail and finance sectors, and are seeking similar options elsewhere.

So, as health systems grapple with questions about revenue, cost optimization and efficiency, they may consider transforming their contact center, especially if they want to create a more frictionless experience, not just for their patients but for their clinical teams as well.

Click the banner below to freshen up your customer experience strategy.

xs_customerexperience_animated_Q324_clickfresh_desktop

xs_customerexperience_animated_Q324_clickfresh_mobile

Finding a Solution Suitable for Healthcare

There are certain administrative functions, such as scheduling or follow-up checks, that can and should be automated so that health systems redirect contact center agents to other priorities. That requires a solution to be well integrated with key applications such as the electronic health records system (EHR) and customer relationship management tools.

To provide a personalized experience for patients, it is essential to link digital communication channels to a back-end source of truth such as Epic, Oracle’s Cerner, Meditech or eClinicalWorks. One program used for this functionality is SpinSci — a ready-made middleware embedded with a wealth of use cases such as automated scheduling, pharmacy refills, billing and others, making it useful out of the box.

And patients want that ease of access: A 2025 Experian Health survey found that 80% of respondents want the ability to schedule appointments at any time, including through a mobile device.

On the provider side, organizations are looking for a solution that is compliant, secure and cost-effective (with pricing based on consumption rather than seats, for example), and that can be optimized to support greater functionalities, such as having AI features that support transcription and summarization, which can be useful for physicians or nurses.

Also, with ongoing changes through mergers and acquisitions in healthcare, a cloud-first platform can better adapt to shifting needs; for example, an organization may need to scale up their contact center strategy during a public health emergency.

Transforming the Overall Patient Experience

For contact center agents, using a platform such as Amazon Connect enhances the agent experience with AI-driven tools that surface relevant patient data in real time, enabling more personalized and efficient interactions. For healthcare organizations, it supports omnichannel communication, integrates with EHRs and offers real-time analytics to improve patient satisfaction and care coordination. Its cloud-native design also reduces IT burden and scales easily to meet demand.

For healthcare leaders, access to valuable analytics can help them identify more areas for automation or better address persistent problems, such as dropped call rates.

As Contact Center as a Solution improves, especially with advancements in AI, the future of the patient experience could usher forth more digitized concierge services: An integrated, virtual resource could help patients schedule their next appointment or alert for a prescription refill. Better personalization for consumers seems more achievable than ever.

This article is part of HealthTech’s MonITor blog series.