- The Maccabi Hotline and CRM (Customer Relations Management) Center Maccabi has established a 24 hour a day, seven days a week call center to provide around the clock services to its members. The services provided include information on all services, including who is actually receiving patients at the time of the member's inquiry, information on member privileges and benefits, making appointments, and telephone consultation with a nurse and/or physician. In order to make this service even more responsive to members' needs, a new customer relations management program is being installed which enables the customer agent to see relevant member information, so that he can provide personally tailored service on the spot. The system also records all encounters. This system is also being installed in all of Maccabi's Branch Offices and it will operate in a totally integrated fashion nationwide.
- Managing Patients Suffering from Chronic Cardiac Insufficiency
A new service which will begin to operate at the beginning of the year, in partnership with two major research institutes (one of them being Maccabi's own Institute for Health Services Research) and a leading public hospital, is a Disease Management Telemedicine System for patients suffering from cardiac insufficiency. The patients, who will be identified through Maccabi's Cardiovascular Registry, will receive digital weight scales and blood pressure measurement devices which will transmit the values on a scheduled basis via telephone to a call center manned by nurses and physicians, who will monitor and adjust the patient's medication as well as flag patients who need immediate medical attention. After a preliminary pilot period and assessment of patient outcomes, this service will be extended to all patients who meet the criteria for chronic cardiac insufficiency.
- Managing Health Care Services "Under Fire"
The recentwar tested the strength and robustness of the Maccabi ICT system and generated a number of new innovations in order to enable Maccabi to continue to provide services to members in the "war zone". Maccabi set up a Central Situation Room which was fully computerized and connected to personnel and services in the area "under fire", both by computer and by regular and cellular phones. A special portal was created within the organizational portal which provided up-to date information, both to employees and providers as well as to members via the Maccabi internet site. Maccabi's on line system was able to identify, in real time, which doctors had opened their clinics and were receiving patients, which pharmacies were open and dispensing medication and the operating status of other services. Maccabi was also able to identify where members, who left the war zone for other parts of the country, were receiving services, and was able to augment these services with additional personnel in order to avoid queues. In addition, Maccabi was able to identify and analyze emerging trends in service utilization and make the necessary adjustments and accommodations.
- Identifying Developing Public Health Crises
Maccabi's sophisticated information and communication system has enabled it to create a real-time surveillance system that can identify emerging outbreaks of health problems. As computers in all of Maccabi's medical services, (physicians, nurses, laboratory, radiology, and etc.) transmit data online on an ongoing basis, we have been able to develop programs that enable us to analyze these data as they are entered to identify developing patterns, such as outbreaks of hepatitis, influenza, pneumonia and other health problems and to react quickly to deal with them. One of Maccabi's new developmental Projects - the "smart system" – a system which enables the creation of algorithms by the user to trigger alerts – will enable us to upgrade the surveillance system with on-line alerts that will make the system even more responsive than it is today.
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