More than just liaison officers

Ever conscious of the way they serve their clients, one of the country’s leading HMOs, IntelliCare, has made a spin on its liaison officers by calling them patient relations officers instead.

But note though that the renaming isn’t nowhere near superficial. IntelliCare’s PROs do more than what the average liaison officer does such as arrange for ambulances, hospital admission and confinement, and assistance during patient’s discharge. As IntelliCare is fond of pointing out, their PROs are often commended by their clients. For them, there is no better reassurance of their client’s trust than that.

As the company’s frontliners, the PROs are the ones who give the company a face. They are the ones who face the clients when they take care of them from admission into the hospital until discharge, coordinating with the admitting and billing sections of the hospital and the accredited doctors handling the patient’s case.

But for IntelliCare, it mainly means treating clients not as implemented business deals but rather as patients whose lives are in their hands.

Josephine Sabuga, senior manager of IntelliCare’s Customer Service Department explains, "We give them the training they need to meet the demands of the job. We put them in regular seminars like customer service and training on new medical developments, terms and modalities."

So where does the difference lie then? Simple: initiative.

Sabuga, herself once an IntelliCare PRO, says they tell their PROs to put themselves in the shoes of their patients. "We make sure they take care of the patients the way the patients expect to be taken care of," Sabuga affirms.

Memorable stories involving PROs abound. Sabuga relates one where a member patient died in the hospital just last Christmas. IntelliCare’s PRO unselfishly spent his Christmas Eve with the bereaved family not just to help out but to personally console and condole with the family.

Another instance was when a PRO voluntarily drove home an elderly patient with a heart ailment when no available relative was there to fetch him. His duty could have just ended in attending to his discharge and settling the bills but instead, he gave his time to safely bring home the patient.

IntelliCare PROs work closely with the in-house Customer Service Department in medical emergency cases because they are the ones who verify the patient’s confinement in a hospital. Involving the PRO in emergency cases is an SOP in IntelliCare, and even more important if the patient is unconscious or a companion is tense and unable to act on the urgency accordingly.

"We get lots of mail from patients. We read them during meetings because that is one very good way to encourage our people. It’s a very good pick-upper after a very long day," Sabuga says.

And with that, IntelliCare patients can expect care that isn’t just first-rate clinically, but also offered with familial warmth not all HMO clients can take comfort in.

For more information about IntelliCare and their products, you can call their 24-hour customer service number (02) 894-3386 or visit their website at www.intellicare.com.ph.