They provide a human touch when it’s most needed and literally get results.
A NSW Health Pathology first, our trained COVID-19 Results Centre operators provide an outbound call service and a timely, empathic end-to-end customer experience.
They build rapport with our patients, confidence in our services, and provide certainty at times of great stress and worry, letting people know when they can leave isolation to resume work, school and travel.
The call centre was created to build on the work of our COVID-19 Results Service, supporting demand for SMS and Result Portal notifications of Negative, Positive, Other and Indeterminate results.
Operators intervene if automated notifications fail to due error, help patients use our result service and portal, and support our laboratories and COVID-19 teams and other partners.
They’re fixers, working seven days a week so people can say personal goodbyes to loved ones or welcome new babies. They arranged testing on route to the airport for a couple whose specimens were not processed, so they didn’t miss a flight to their daughter’s graduation.
They use translation services to overcome language barriers and relay results direct to patients with little or no English. Those who are unfamiliar with new communications technology are patiently helped to register with our service and access their results.
Sometimes they find patients alone and struggling in isolation without family and friends for support. They listen to their stories, which makes a big difference to their day, and will suggest where to find support.
The team would like to acknowledge the efforts of its laboratory call centre colleagues and army of NSW Health Pathology volunteers who helped staff our result service when it was first established.