How a Public Sector Health Center Shifted to the Cloud in 48 Hours

The acceleration of digital transformation during the pandemic has been well documented -- but it isn’t just the technology that has moved us so far forward. It’s people like the team at the Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center. 

More than 1,000 professionals work at the Lake County Health Department to promote the health and wellbeing of all who live, work, and play in Lake County, Illinois. In 2020, the organization was in the early stages of transitioning their on-premises contact center operations to the cloud. But the pandemic sped up those plans because staff needed to be able work remotely while handling a dramatic and rapid increase of incoming calls from the public. Volumes were up 1,300% in the early days of the crisis.  

Embracing change  

Lake County Health Informatics and Technology Director Jefferson McMillan-Wilhoit and his team worked diligently to stand up the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center in just 48 hours so that the organization could provide a COVID-19 hotline to the community. Jefferson says they chose the solution because it was flexible enough to allow the team to take calls from home and easy to use. This was crucial because calls weren’t being answered by traditional contact center agents; they were being answered by nurses, physicians, and other staff members. At one point, even executives stepped in to help manage the demand.  

The team was also able to leverage Five9’s UC integration with Microsoft Teams to collaborate across the organization and seamless transfer incoming calls to specialized subject matter experts. They can check experts who use Teams to see if someone is available, then transfer the call to the expert or conference them in. They also use Teams messaging to interact with other agents, supervisors, and subject matter experts. 

Putting patients and the public at the center of the experience  

Shortly after the Five9 implementation for its COVID-19 hotline, the Lake County Health Department also began using Five9 technology for the Patient Access Center, which fields around 6,000 calls per month, and its IT help desk contact centers. Now that call volumes have stabilized, Jefferson and his team are using the platform to refine workflows. They’re also using the Five9 Adapter for Salesforce to consolidate information and help agents and utilize the power of real-time community member data.  

Moving to the cloud also enabled the Lake County Health Department to expand its volunteer program. Lake County Health Department agents continue to work from home, and the department anticipates they will continue to do so indefinitely.  

“As a government entity, we’re always looking for ways to effectively use taxpayer dollars. Remote work is one way we can do that,” Jefferson says. “A move to the cloud often seems so huge, but when the technology is easy to use, the move doesn’t seem that big. Five9 was so intuitive that our agents did not even notice the technology. The focus is on reimagining the patient and public experience.” 

Learn more about how Lake County Health Department and Community Center has embraced innovation to improve operations and patient experience by watching this Take 5 Video.  

Or read the full case study at https://www.five9.com/resources/case-study-lake-county.