RiverSpring Health Plans, based in The Bronx, NY, said it is setting its call center apart from others in the industry with more than a dozen employees who speak multiple languages, including Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian and Armenian. Additionally, unlike some companies, RiverSpring Health Plans does not outsource to foreign countries or use robotics to respond to clients’ needs.
The company serves more than 19,000 members and is affiliated with RiverSpring Living, which offers skilled nursing facility, assisted living and memory care community and home care options.
The company offers three health plans. For RiverSpring at Home and RiverSpring MAP, the goal is to keep people at home with the help of their services and care management. However, for RiverSpring Star plan, most of the members live in a nursing home.
“The last thing we want is for them to have to navigate through a bunch of prompts to find the department they’re interested in speaking to,” Patty Hron, vice president of member services, told the McKnight’s Business Daily. “We take great pride in having people answer all the phone calls.”
Hron said most of the managed long-term care health plan clients speak Russian. Additionally, she said, the health plan uses two translation services to help with other languages that only have a few members.
“We have translation services that speak all the languages that we need, whether it’s Polish, Japanese, Italian, Urdu, we have that availability too,” Hron said.
The translation services are provided free of charge to health plan members. In addition, Hron added, RiverSpring Health Plans provides translations of all written materials.
Hron said she believes the on-site, personalized service in a variety of languages gives RiverSpring Health Plans a competitive advantage over similar companies. She said many members call back just to say thank you and commend the call center for solving their problems and providing empathy.
“We have compassionate, trained people to answer the phone and to help our members not only navigate anything within our health plan and the services we provide, but also in healthcare in general or other things,” such as finding a doctor or specialist in their community, assistance with meals, aid services, physical therapy and social work.
