Project News

From February 16 to 22, 2020, the project conducted the study tour in Japan on improving the quality of call center customer service. The National Health Security Office (NHSO), Thailand, has established the call center at the NHSO headquarters to receive all inquiries related to medical facilities for all Thai citizens, regardless of the type of their subscribing medical insurance for 24 hours every day. Since medical facility where people obtain medical service is subject to the type of their medical insurance and their health condition, call center will inform the people about the health facility to consult. If the outpatient and inpatient needs advanced inpatient service, NHSO can coordinate other hospital for admission. NHSO call center also receive comments and complaints from general public about medical services they obtained.

Through this study tour, participant learned the activities and ideas closely related to the healthcare field; the activities and consultation of the medical safety center at the public health center, training to deepen mutual understanding between patients and medical professionals, the training process for medical consultants, and ways to connect patient voices to improve medical services. In addition, they had the opportunity to touch on the activities at the fire department's command center, the concept of customer service in private companies, activities to enhance staff's motivation, stress management methods and career paths to reduce early turnover. Counterparts in Japan were surprised by the 24-hour call center operation in Thailand and praised the activities to make the workplace more enjoyable.

The NHSO Call Center aims to be a role model within ASEAN. It would be expected that what the participants gained in this study tour will contribute to improving the call center activities near future.