CVA faces the same challenges as many of today’s medical practice groups. These include recruiting physicians, acquiring patients, retaining patients, and strengthening communications with referring physicians (who account for 60-70% of CVA’s cardiology business). In an increasingly complicated healthcare market, CVA tackles these issues head on, continually seeking new and creative solutions to old problems.

For seven years, SoundCare has been one of CVA’s most promising communications solutions—effectively reducing call abandonment, retaining patients, educating callers, managing callers’ expectations, and strengthening CVA’s key relationship with the American Heart Association.

“Our physicians understand how SoundCare strengthens our patient communications and enhances our physician-relationship driven practice,” says Bill Cockrell, Administrator. “SoundCare is a natural fit for us.”

SoundCare also helps highlight the important relationship CVA has with the American Heart Association (AHA). For example, callers can easily find out how to register for AHA’s annual American Heart Walk via SoundCare. Once the walk is completed, Vericom simply replaces the time sensitive message with another. Thanks to Vericom’s annual health observances calendar, CVA can plan for other AHA events as well. “We rely on Vericom’s knowledge of healthcare. Their ability to effectively manage content changes guarantees our success for the 1,100 calls we can receive on a busy day,“ adds Cockrell. “We know SoundCare works, and we prove it every day.”

Most patients have been with CVA a long time and call in frequently. These patients sometimes experience lengthy wait times in order to speak to someone in person. (CVA does not let patients leave voicemail). Operators can’t always turn-over calls quickly, and occasionally spend up to ten minutes handling a call involving scheduling physician appointments and multiple diagnostic tests. While they wait, SoundCare informs and educates these callers. “Even though callers sometimes spend several minutes at a time on hold, SoundCare’s ability to educate callers and keep them occupied with pertinent health information ensures our patients stay with us,” says Cockrell. “It’s a great retention tool.“

CVA’s success with SoundCare stems from callers hearing messages both on hold and in queue. “Once callers could listen to SoundCare messages at any point during their call, our abandonment rates dropped significantly. We have tracked a 67% decrease in lost calls with SoundCare,” adds Cockrell.