Marie Curie Cancer Case Study
Marie Curie Cancer Care Supporting Critical Connections
One of the UK’s largest end-of-life nursing providers caring for over 31,000 patients a year
The Challenge
To Marie Curie Cancer Care, Customer Service takes on special meaning. As a charity which provides end of life care for people with terminal illnesses, and who has been providing this essential service for over 60 years, Marie Curie Cancer Care always made it the highest priority to deliver the healthiest level of customer patient care.
As more people and their families turned to the organization, seeking the assistance of over 2000 nurses to help care for terminally ill patients in their own homes, Marie Curie Cancer Care’s referral service had to take action to keep up with increased demand. With over 5500 inbound calls per week for over 2800 weekly patient visits, manually searching the roster of nurses to make individually unique patient matches became increasingly cumbersome, taking upwards of 25 minutes to complete a call and assign a nurse.
The Solution
Marie Curie Cancer Care recognized that it needed to overhaul its referral system to keep pace with current demands, and meet its anticipated growth following an expansion effort to increase the number of patients it could serve. The revised system needed to reduce the time and steps that it took agents to match each patient with a nurse factoring in available time, geographical proximity, continuity of care and the necessary skills for that patient’s needs. Additionally, the service needed to have the ability to scale as the organization did.
After evaluating several solutions, Marie Curie Cancer Care turned to Sword Ciboodle to breathe new life into its customer service, deploying a solution they named Patient Connect.
Marie Curie Cancer Care leveraged the Ciboodle Platform to power its automated Patient Connect solution, which completely automates the referral system, effectively supporting patients at every stage from general needs to crisis-level.
The Results
Patient Connect’s benefits were realized almost immediately. Within the first 6 months, referral times were slashed by 76 percent, dropping from 25 minutes or more to just six, and reducing coordinator training times from 5 weeks to 5 days. Additionally, the efficiency of the Ciboodle Platform eliminated the need to expand Marie Curie Cancer Care’s contact center, allowing resources to be directed towards additional patient services. Patient Connect truly functions as the life blood for the critical and sensitive nature of Marie Curie Cancer Care’s nurse-patient matching program, allowing for quick, streamlined connections and logistics coordination among the Center, the staff and the patients.
Benefits
- 76% reduction in patient referral times from 25 minutes to six
- 80% decrease in new coordinator training time from five weeks to five days
- Institute of Customer Service Awards finalist 2011, European Call Center & Customer Service Awards Finalist 2011
Solution Highlights
- Channels: Inbound and outbound telephony, email
- Processes Include: Set up, billing, payment and tracking of all service contracts, patient status management, nursing skills and resource management, matching nurse location and skills to patient needs, patient and nurse inquiries
- Integration: Bing Maps, Back-End Systems for invoicing and nurse remuneration
