Efficiency emerges as the vanguard in most all businesses. Even in healthcare, where quality interactions and successful outcomes, demand primary attention, efficacy remains as a key tool to achieve these desired results. Perhaps nowhere is this more critical than in healthcare call centers, where every second counts, sometimes with life and death ramifications. While many options can help streamline call center work, outsourcing stands as a key solution that often produces the biggest payoff.Consider these ways in which call center outsourcing can help streamline your operation.Outsource Specific Tasks: Call center agents are tapped to handle a wide array of work, some of which is easier than others. Often volume drives competence, which implies infrequent call types may produce a disproportionate quantity of struggles. For example, a call center primarily tasked with answer-transfer, call screening, and messaging, may struggle with dispatching or appointment setting. These tasks aren’t difficult, just uncommon. So why not outsource these challenging call types so you can further streamline what’s left?Outsource Certain Shifts: Some shifts are harder to fill than others. This is a reality in any 24/7 call center. Often the most difficult shift to fill is also the least busy one: third shift. So not only is the overnight shift the most challenging to staff, it’s also the most boring. Just as you struggle to fill third shift, your agents struggle to stay engaged with the callers who do call. Plus, errors are more likely to occur on a slow shift than on a moderately paced one, where agents cycle through calls at a comfortably brisk rate.For these shifts, the best solution, the cost-effective response, may be outsourcing.Outsource Overflow: The opposite of slow shifts are extra-busy ones, where agents move breathlessly from one call to the next and then stagger off to their break exhausted.Your traffic projection says you need 3.6 agents working for two hours midmorning, but you only need 3.0 agents working the hour before and 2.8 agents working the hour after. Finding a fourth agent to fill a two-hour shift is next to impossible. So the only viable solution seems to be asking everyone to suck it up and work extra hard for two hours. Yet, day after day, week after week, this wears down staff. Resentment builds.The easy solution is to outsource the extra calls during this two hour marathon time block. In essence, let your staff handle the work of three agents and outsource the remaining work of the .6 agent.Outsource Everything: Sometimes call centers are too small to operate efficiently. Short of finding a way to direct more work to them, the wise alternative might be to outsource the entire operation. Outsourcing call centers can handle this, too. Let them process all your calls, 24/7. Let them worry about the staffing, the training, the scheduling—and the streamlining. That’s what they do. Janet Livingston is the president of Call Center Sales Pro, a premier sales and marketing service provider for the call center industry and who offers a healthcare call center matchmaking service. Contact Janet at contactus@callcenter-salespro.com or call 800-901-7706.Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer from Southwest Michigan.