“Your contact center is the front door to your healthcare system.” 

You’ve heard that line over and over and over again.

But what if it could be so much more? 

• What if your contact center navigators could stand alongside nurses in the emergency department, helping discharge patients with their follow-up appointments already scheduled? 
• What if it were a place where your most skilled agents could meet patients at the exact moment they need help? 
• What if agents could virtually connect with patients in the exam room before they even leave their doctor’s office?

“What if, what if, what if…”

For the past three years, the “what if” questions have been driving Malik Bahar, AVP, Access Center & Loyalty at Virtua Health, to completely reinvent how his contact center operates. 

His approach is to take the expertise and technology already sitting in the contact center and deploy it in entirely new ways.

You can hear all about what Virtua Health is doing in our new webinar on Jan. 26 from 12 p.m.-1 p.m. ET. We’re co-hosting the webinar with Everise, a global customer experience company that specializes in providing outsourced contact center services. Glen Hall, vice president of sales at Everise, will join the webinar and HCCT editor, Jessica Levco will moderate it. 

A sneak peek of what Bahar will discuss: 

Virtua Health launched two programs that extend contact center capabilities beyond traditional phone-based interactions: Patient Experience Navigators (PENs) and Virtual Navigation.

• PENs places non-clinical access center navigators directly in emergency departments, inpatient floors and clinical decision units. These navigators work alongside clinical care teams to schedule follow-up appointments with in-network specialists before patients are discharged. Today, PENs is the largest subgroup within Virtua Health’s 250-person access center department, with 25 full-time employees dedicated to the initiative.
• Virtual Navigation takes a similar approach, but focuses on primary care. Non-clinical access center navigators connect with patients before they leave their primary care office and schedule follow-up appointments based on physician’s referrals. Launched in 2024 at four pilot practices, the program achieved a 99% in-network conversion rate, with more than 2,500 specialty appointments.

“Contact centers have always been about access,” Hall says. “But what Virtua Health demonstrates is that with the right strategy and technology, contact centers can become patient experience transformation hubs.”