Listening – key to organizational success
Communications internally and externally improves service, creates a partnership, and delivers success.
Even as Aquity provides a technology-based transcription service to healthcare organization, its mantra revolves around steady, consistent communication.
It’s not just lip service for Kashyap Joshi CEO of Aquity Solutions. It’s crucial to listen intently, then respond decisively.
The emphasis on communication extends both to customers and Aquity’s transcriptionists and scribes, many of whom work overseas in India. This focus on communication is a prime factor in Aquity being named as a Best in KLAS service provider for multiple years.
A deep commitment to communication helps foster a culture that puts the customer first – not just as a business matter, but in partnerships that enable Aquity to discern needs and then meet them. The approach mirrors the person-centered focus that’s now infusing healthcare organizations today, he believes.
“At every level, right from the transcriptionist to a scribe or coder to the VP or CEO, we always think about the customer first,” Joshi adds. “We are a service organization where we are dealing with human behavior. We are not machines; we are not algorithms. So constant communication is part of our culture of engagement.”
Unburdening clinicians
Transcription and other clinician-support services are particularly important for healthcare organizations, many of which are seeing physicians burn out over administrative tasks, amplified by the need to document patient care in electronic health records systems.
This burden has been widely documented by the American Medical Association, and Joshi sees Acuity’s transcription and other support services as one way to reverse this trend, which is exacerbating the shortage of doctors and other caregivers who use EHR systems.
Doctors especially need to get back to engaging with patients so they can make full use of their training, knowledge and skills. “We want to know how we can send doctors back into looking into patients’ eyes and take away all other administrative tasks.”
Aquity seeks to partner with users of its services, but that requires frequent communication, with the dialogues aiming to innovate solutions to solve unique problems. “If a customer calls you a vendor, then you are not a true partner,” Joshi says. “A vendor is just a provider of a service – it’s like a commodity. Once a customer looks at you as a partner, the relationship becomes different. They become very open in terms of talking about their problems. And you can only find solutions if you know what the problems are.”
Aquity aims to offer solutions and services that can provide savings for customers. “We want to align with customers; we want to understand our customers; we want them to be successful,” he adds
Valuing employees
Communication with Aquity’s own employees helps to demonstrate the value that the company places on them as individuals, and it’s been crucial in ensuring retention and commitment of its scribes and transcribers.
From the outset, Aquity emphasizes a message that customers’ concerns matter, and how to respond to those. “What customers think about us, their perception is very, very important,” Joshi notes.
Aquity’s relationship with its workers – many of whom are based in India – was best exemplified by how the company accommodated them during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our DNA was to work from offices – we had few people working from home. Now, all of a sudden, we had to have everybody at home. We were able to send them home in two days.” Internet challenges in India forced a variety of arrangements to keep transcriptionists connected to customers.”
Aquity also arranged vaccinations for employees and family members, provided additional medical coverage and paid time off, and even funded ambulance service to get staff and family members to hospitals when acute care was necessary. “Such access to healthcare during the difficult times helped us to sail through this, and those employees have now become loyal to us.”
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