By: Sarah Reitsma
Healthcare is competitive, and if your communication isn’t top-notch, patients won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere.
Healthcare used to be focused on the clinical outcome alone, how well you treated the patient’s medical needs. But now, communication has become a core differentiator. Good care is an expectation, but patients also want to feel connected, heard, and understood at every interaction. Creating that seamless experience means overcoming common frustrations like misrouted calls and confusing phone menus.
These frustrations aren’t minor annoyances though, they’re big drivers for burnout and low morale for staff. The delay in care has serious consequences for the business side of healthcare. The inefficiency impacts revenue through missed appointments, billing delays, and lost referrals.
Future forward healthcare organizations are focused on addressing these challenges with smarter, and more unified communication tools. The reality is, if you’re not thinking about this, you’re missing a critical part of delivering modern care. Which is why these tools aren’t reserved only for the large hospital systems. They’re built to help smaller practices and everything in between to deliver the same efficient experience. For example, imagine a patient’s parent calling saying, “I need my child’s immunization records for school,” and immediately reaching the right department without hassle.
Modern unified communication tools are now equipped with AI capabilities. The real game-changer is that these AI-driven tools empower both the provider and the payer side of healthcare. On the payer side, AI can simplify insurance jargon by translating terms into plain language.
I often hear many phone systems still relying on menu options like, “check eligibility,” which leaves people scratching their heads. Most people don’t really understand what eligibility means, they just want a simple answer to, “will this be covered?” AI changes the game by letting patients ask natural questions like, “what will I have to pay?” and then quickly providing clear and personalized answers.
The impact on the business is clear: reducing frustration leads to happier customers, which means higher retention and fewer repeat calls. Faster issue resolution lowers operational costs and accelerates claims processing, leading to a healthier bottom line.
While it’s easy to identify the frustration patients face on the surface, much of the real struggle happens behind the scenes. Disconnected systems, outdated infrastructure, and manual workflows create the bottlenecks behind the misrouted calls and delayed responses. Without a unified foundation, even those most well-intentioned improvements stay siloed.
This is where Avaya Infinity comes in. Instead of layering more tools on top of already complex systems, it replaces the patchwork with a single, flexible platform that connects your people, patients, and processes to your data. Everything works together in real time, from front-desk scheduling and clinical follow-ups to prescription refills and billing support. Having a strong foundation makes it easier to scale and see a return on your digital transformation efforts.
It’s time to promote communication from a support function to a strategic asset. When it’s not working, the downstream effects are real, lost patients, lost revenue, and strained staff.
Start by taking a hard look at how your organization connects with patients and teams. Identify each delay as one that costs you time, trust, or revenue. Bring clinical, administrative, and IT leaders into the process early, alignment is essential. From there, evaluate solutions that are built for the complexity of healthcare, and not another patch for an already overcomplicated system. The right platform should bring together voice, data, and workflows across departments. Most importantly, choose a partner who doesn’t just understand the technology, but understands the pressure of delivering more, remaining compliant, and knows the damage of any downtime. At the end of the day, better communication isn’t only about smoother operations. It’s about building trust with your patients, creating space for your staff to do their best work, and staying competitive in a changing healthcare landscape.
