Call Center Solutions Featured Article

Medical information call centers are essential to the health knowledge of both patients and doctors all over the world. They must be adequately staffed and have up-to-date technology in order for its staff of agents to provide high quality customer service. According to a recent study by Cutting Edge Information, Medical information call centers require the specific headcounts and necessary budgets to provide the best support to physicians and patients alike.

The new study, "Medical Information Teams and Call Center Management," found that medical information call center staffing widely ranged depending on the centers' sizes. Surveyed companie’s headcounts ranged from one FTE to 45 FTEs across pharmaceutical and medical device companies. But, the study's analysis of call load per employee and budget per employee showed many more comparisons across call centers of all sizes.

"Medical information call centers are often the first contact between a pharmaceutical company and the physicians and patients who use its products," said Ryan McGuire, research team leader at Cutting Edge Information, in a statement. "They answer these two important groups' critical questions and they cannot succeed without the headcounts and budgets necessary to meet customers' needs."

Based on staffing decisions, many of the surveyed companies call center employees handled between 100 and 200 calls per month, while generally funding call centers with $100,000 to $200,000 per FTE.

New product launches are the primary drivers for increasing medical information headcounts. These launches require many activities within the medical information team including conducting new training for responding to medical inquiries, preparing new standard response documents, as well as expanding an existing call center or bringing a new call center online.

Moreover, product launches include understanding and managing the medical information function from internal operations to call center operations, managing a growing number of medical information responsibilities including call centers, library services and copy review, and leveraging medical information team’s capabilities to support internal functions.