A Call to Service - Veterans Health Benefits Service Center

Health Management Technology, Sept, 2001 by Jim Bender

Veterans Health Administration educates veterans with a Web-enabled call center.

In the summer of 1998, Kent Simonis, director of VHA Health Administration Services, was about to roll out a public outreach campaign to announce a seismic shift in VA's delivery of healthcare to veterans. Although the change expanded care and simplified rules, Simonis knew that once the new regulations were announced, telephones would ring in VA facilities from San Francisco to Boston.

With less than a month to go before the nationwide launch of the outreach campaign, he implemented a plan to respond quickly and consistently to every phone call. As project manager, he coordinated the combined efforts of VHA technical personnel and the outreach communications contractor to build, staff and launch a nationwide call center to answer complex healthcare policy questions. He did it in less than two weeks.

Congressional Mandate

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) manages the nation's largest integrated healthcare network. It employs about 180,000 staff, and operates 173 medical centers, 771 ambulatory care and community-based clinics, 134 nursing homes, 42 domiciliaries and 206 readjustment counseling centers.

VHA provides healthcare services to approximately 4 million veterans. Every one of them would be affected by the Veterans' Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996 (informally known as Eligibility Reform).

The law required all veterans to enroll in the healthcare system before receiving care, and it classified all veterans into one of seven priority groups. The priority group to which a veteran was assigned determined the level of his or her benefits. It was critical that veterans understood these fundamental changes, as well as many others sparked by the new law.

Congress mandated a nationwide public outreach campaign to explain the changes. After a competitive bidding process, VHA awarded the public outreach program to Condor Technology Solutions, a company that combines information technology services with communication services to help clients organize, analyze and distribute information.

"The decision to hire Condor for the outreach program was based in part on the company's ability to design a nationwide communications outreach program integrating broadcast, print and Web media, and to provide training to employees," Simonis said. "We didn't know at the time that we would also end up asking them to build a call center in a matter of weeks."

Call Center Requirements

VHA realized the importance of providing veterans with a human source to answer questions. In the past, veterans with benefit questions had been referred to their local VHA facilities. This time, VHA wanted a single communication hub where information would be delivered consistently to all veterans, regardless of their location. The telephone number was to be highlighted in the public outreach campaign.

To fully meet the demands of such a large communication effort, Simonis' team defined several requirements.

1 The call center must be built to handle a large number of callers. With millions of veterans under VHA care, public interest would be intense.

2 The underlying software system had to be robust, capable of withstanding heavy usage, and secure to keep veteran information confidential.

3 The system would have to be preloaded with hundreds of question/answer scenarios.

4 Reporting capabilities were necessary to give VHA officials call data.

5 Decision support capabilities had to be included to allow for slicing and dicing of call data.

6 The call center had to provide a user-friendly interface for VHA officials to access reports and analyze data.

7 Escalation procedures were required to handle complex inquiries, and emergency response procedures were recommended.

8 Everything had to be up and running perfectly in about two weeks.

Given the timeline, the odds of finding a contractor to build the call center were slim. But Condor, the company designing the communications campaign, offered a solution. We (Condor) had been running technical help desks for several years. With a few modifications, the technical help desk model could be modified to provide an information-based call center.

After reviewing our proposal and securing special permission to give us a temporary six-month contract without a competitive bid, VHA chose Condor for the job.

Web-based Solution

We offered a proprietary call center solution called ArmiSys[TM] (Advanced Request Management Information System). The system proved easily adaptable to the information-based call center model. Built with a Domino front end and Oracle back end, it offered the strength, flexibility and security required for the VHA call center. Additional software includes Lotus Notes, Broadbase Data Warehouse, Brio Reporting Tool and Blue Pumpkin Help Desk staffing software.

ArmiSys is comprised of five major modules:

* a tracking and workflow module to chart the path of requests;

* an online library for policy and procedures;

* a knowledge database for problem/resolution scenarios, equipped with advanced search capabilities and output ranked by relevance;