CONNECT Makes the Right Call for Process Improvement

Deirdre Rea is the director of CONNECT, our confidential, 24-hour emergency evaluation and referral service for community members seeking psychiatric and behavioral health advice or treatment.

Our CONNECT team is able to put callers in touch with psychiatric nurses, clinical social workers and counselors who can address their need—whether it be emotional or behavioral. 

“In winter of last year, we were tasked with increasing access to mental health assistance for our community; we took a hard look at our processes because they were fragmented and inefficient,” Deirdre said. “It wasn’t because of our employees–we simply weren't able to see all of our call data.”

That hard look found that only 69.5 percent of calls were answered within 20 seconds and 17.5 percent of calls went unanswered.

“With many of our calls being crisis calls, these were calls we did not want to miss,” she said. “We all agreed to find a better way to do things.”

Through job shadowing and control charts, they discovered a few key issues:

• Employee schedules were not matching call volume.
• There were inconsistent procedures on intake, handoffs and call pick-ups.
• There was a lack of technology, so they weren't able to see whether things were going well. 

Once the issues were identified, the team was able to see where and how they could improve. To make improvements, they:

• Reorganized staff scheduling
• Improved call tracking technology
• Standardized processes and procedures
• Revised training
• Increased reporting and quality review processes

The positive results were almost immediate.

In just four months after making the changes, the percent of calls answered within 20 seconds was at 84.9 percent. And those unanswered calls? Only 5.2 percent.

“It was amazing to see those numbers improve. We did not have to add staff or add hours to current staff–we just changed things up based on what the data was telling us,” Deirdre said.

As of February 2018–about one year later–the answered calls percentage was over 91 percent, and the missed calls below 2 percent.

“There are many dedicated people who work here in CONNECT–there always have been. When you can match that dedication with a better way to do your job, the results are truly amazing,” she said.

It has also created a little bit of fun competition among the staff. On each team member’s computer monitor, a scroll runs 24-7, showing call data–calls waiting, picks-ups, misses, drops and service level. When that scroll blinks and shows a call is coming in, everyone is aware–and everyone wants to be the next person to take that call so they can visibly see their numbers improve.

And every one of them want to be that voice on the other end, ready to help.

The team’s success made them a finalist in the Pioneer category in the 2017 Quality Awards last year.

For more information, contact Deirdre Rea at dorea@carilionclinic.org or 540-266-6377 (76377).