Automation Makes Life Easier For LifeLink Foundation

Stacey Snow

Staff Writer

TAMPA -- LifeLink Foundation Inc. no longer belongs to the sector of the health care industry that lags behind in technological savvy.

The nonprofit organ procurement organization formerly handled all calls and referrals to its call center manually because it lacked an automated system.

The process involved a complex series of manual calendars, faxing and White Out, said Bobbie Pierson, vice president of data and communications. Employees looked through algorithms to see how to handle calls, she said.

"Most of the OPOs, tissue banks and eye banks outsource calls to organizations that specialize in taking those types of calls," said Pierson.

LifeLink chooses to operate its own call center, with 27 employees.

But the volume of calls increased in 1998 when the federal government mandated that hospitals call in all deaths to a designated organ procurement organization, Pierson said. And when another organ procurement organization approached LifeLink about handling its calls through their call center, the nonprofit realized it was time to upgrade.

"We had to look at automating our system to make it easier," said Pierson.

LifeLink specializes in the recovery and transplantation of organs and tissues. It controls four other organ procurement organizations, a tissue bank, a transplant institute and an immunology laboratory.

LifeLink's call center operators field calls from hospitals when patients expire. An operator collects basic information, including the patient's name, age and cause of death, and from that information LifeLink determines if the patient is suitable for organ, tissue or eye donation.

To ramp up its system, LifeLink sought the help of Tribridge Inc., a Tampa business consulting firm.

LifeLink learned of Tribridge through its controller, who formerly worked with the Tribridge principals at Arthur Andersen LLP.

LifeLink and Tribridge worked for nearly a year to program the system, which allows the call center to take on the outside organ procurement organization's calls plus those of an additional organization.

It reduced the number of errors and allowed the call center to take on the additional volume without hiring more staff, Pierson said.

Incoming calls from hospitals increased by 43,000 in one year and outside messages by 10,000 in one year.

"It (the system) kind of does the thinking for the call center," said Maurica Cates, assistant director.

Rather than having employees look at algorithms to handle calls, LifeLink's application takes the pieces of information and runs them through an algorithm itself to determine if a person is eligible as a donor, said Mike Herdegen, chief technology officer of Tribridge.

The changes allow LifeLink to take information and turn it around within a one-minute time frame. For the fiscal year ended June 30 LifeLink had 106,487 donor referrals.

And now call center staff can access the same information at the same time, so any staff member can follow up on a call initially fielded by someone else.

Instead of paging doctors or other staff members, operators fax the information through the computer in real time.

That cuts down on the need to have people available to answer pages, and it means operators aren't on the phone as much, Pierson said.

The system costs $250,000. LifeLink has continued to add enhancements, such as one for call scheduling that shows which doctor should handle a referral in the field.

Other organ procurement organizations have shown interest in LifeLink's application, said Herdegen.

"Whenever the folks from LifeLink go to a conference they talk about it," he said. "People's jaws just drop."

To reach Stacey Snow, call (813) 342-2473 or send your e-mail to ssnow@bizjournals.com.

Copyright © 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.

This article posted April 19, 2003.