In healthcare, every phone call matters. Whether it’s a patient trying to schedule a mammogram or someone calling about their child’s latest lab results, these are the types of calls that define the patient experience. 

Having well-trained agents pick up the phone makes a big difference in the patient experience. But so does the contact center’s software. 

At the 34^th annual Healthcare Contact Center Times conference in Atlanta, two healthcare organizations shared what they learned from transitioning their contact center to the cloud. 

Rachel Papka, chief innovation officer at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging Centers, said the decision to go to the cloud was to ensure she could offer easier access for her patients without compromising cost efficiency.

“Each year, we see increasing pressure on reimbursement while striving to meet the growing expectations of our team,” says Rachel Papka, Chief Innovation Officer at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging Centers. “By investing in technology that boosts efficiency and proves its ROI, we can offset financial constraints and reinvest in our workforce.” 

In other words: the old way of doing this was no longer sustainable. Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging Centers was facing capacity limits.

“We’re based in Las Vegas — it’s a 24/7 town,” Papka says. “We have MRI appointments up to 11 p.m. But as demand grew, it became clear our previous phone system couldn’t scale with us. We needed something more modern and flexible to support around-the-clock care.”

Katie Riehl, Director of Operations For Consumer Access and Experience at St. Luke’s Health System, shared that the organization had faced similar challenges with long wait times and high call abandonment rates before transitioning their Contact Center to a cloud-based platform.

Riehl said that once the health system made the switch, they saw immediate results. For example, the abandonment rate went down by 70%. The speed to answer decreased by 50%. In addition, the handle time decreased by one minute. 

She emphasized the importance of thoughtful integration between Epic and Genesys to support staff efficiency. 

“We’ve designed our workflows so that tasks are initiated in Epic and seamlessly flow into Genesys,” Riehl says. “This reduces the need for staff to toggle between systems and helps them stay focused on patient needs.”

Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of Riehl’s story involves how staff responded to the new technology. 

“There was some initial hesitation — understandably so — but over time, our teams began to see the technology as a tool that supports their work, not replaces it. Now, they’re not only using it — they’re helping us improve it. One team member even suggested, ‘What if our phone system could start prescription refills automatically?’ That kind of ownership is exactly what we hoped for.”

Papka leaned on leaderboards and gamification to encourage staff to embrace the new technology. 

“As soon as we implemented the workforce manager, as well as gamification and the leaderboard, everyone was asking, ‘How do I get to be No. 1 on the leaderboard? What are my metrics?’” Papka says. 

But not everything went smoothly. Papka says the experience taught her a valuable lesson about implementation partners. 

“One of the most important lessons we learned was the value of finding the right fit in an implementation partner,” Papka says. “Organizations often spend months, even years, choosing the right software — but how much time is spent making sure the people implementing it are the right fit? That alignment plays a big role in how smoothly the process goes.”

Papka says that moving toward the cloud has brought recognition to the contact center team.

“Your agents are the first touch, but how often does your organization get reminded of how well your agents are doing? Now, with the proper measurement tools from the cloud, everyone knows how amazing our contact center is,” Papka says.