Late in June 2012, VCH became a client of the Workplace Health Call Centre (WHCC), which is now a provincial resource for reporting staff accident, injury or exposure, and for new staff who require a baseline health assessment. Fraser Health, PHSA, VIHA and PHC were already using the service.
Shortly after VCH signed on, the workload in the WHHC escalated sharply.
“We had just added Interior Health and Northern Health as clients, and were adjusting workload to meet the need. Then changes to WorkSafe BC claims procedures started, pertussis hit, and norovirus, and the flu, and the volume of calls skyrocketed,” says Frances Kerstiens, Interim Manager, Incident Reporting.
With so many calls coming in to the Incident Reporting side of the WHCC, many went to voice mail, even during office hours, and WHCC had to then make return calls to contact those who had left voice messages. This caused frustration for health authority staff who were calling in to WHCC, and for Call Centre staff themselves.
“We figured out very quickly that we had to augment our Call Centre staff to get caught up with the backlog,” Kerstiens says. “We also looked at a couple of our processes that we discovered weren’t as efficient as we anticipated, and sorted that out.”
By mid-December, WHCC Incident Reporting staff were catching up, and 65% of calls were “live” calls – health authority staff spoke directly to an agent and didn’t have to leave a voice message. And on January 16, 90% of the 131 incident calls were “live” calls. The expectation is that the WHCC will sustain these servicing standards.
“We know there was frustration for staff who tried to call WHCC,” admits Kerstiens, “and we apologize for that. We have done our best to respond quickly to the situation, and we are now caught up and looking forward to serving our clients promptly and efficiently.”
As Executive Director of Workplace Health at VCH, I echo Kerstiens’ comments. I want to thank all our staff and managers for their patience as we implemented this important new provincial initiative. We embarked on this journey for two reasons: to be able to gather accurate and complete information about staff injuries and near misses that improve safety outcomes, and to insure that employees get timely processing of their WorkSafe claims. The WHCC worked very hard to overcome implementation issues. I am confident they will be able to maintain good customer service and look forward to even better service later this year once improvements to their telephone and data systems are in place.
Since VCH signed on, the Workplace Health Call Centre has become a province-wide resource for all health authorities, covering over 110,000 employees. WHCC, with 20 telephone agents and 10 Occupational Health Nurses, averages 22,000 incident reports annually.
Coming soon: Part 2 – new WHCC telephony system.