MedStar Health is a not-for-profit healthcare organization serving patients in the Washington, D.C.–Baltimore, Maryland area. Headquartered in Columbia, MD, the organization oversees 10 hospitals and 500 care sites. With over 30,000 associates and 4,700 affiliated physicians, MedStar’s clinical activity includes primary care, cardiology, oncology services, rehabilitation, neurosciences, orthopedic surgery, women’s services, and emergency/ trauma services, among others.
The organization is dedicated to serving its customers and ensuring they get the (often critical) care they need. However, with high numbers like those mentioned above, one can imagine the challenge of answering the volume that MedStar’s contact center receives. According to Kristina Russell, Vice President of IS Operations, this number is over 15,000 calls per day in 2025. MedStar has consolidated, improved, and grown its patient access teams to meet this level of demand.
MedStar Health’s Contact Center
As is the case with many healthcare providers, MedStar’s contact center serves as a primary point of contact for patients seeking to schedule appointments, pay bills, and find answers to their inquiries. Furthermore, the organization uses its contact center for outbound calls to help with patient discharge instructions and to set up post-hospital appointments. MedStar’s contact center is one of the key systems through which they communicate and serve their customers.
However, by 2019, MedStar’s previous phone system was no longer fit for purpose — the organization needed an upgrade. In addition to this, MedStar was looking to consolidate call center services, so leadership knew that a significant overhaul to their contact center equipment and software was in order.
Partnering With Cisco
MedStar put out a request for proposal (RFP) in 2019, and it was during that process that leadership considered Cisco as the best potential partner, and Webex as the best potential solution. Unfortunately, with the RFP taking place in 2019, that didn’t give MedStar much time to act before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. This both complicated the process of adopting a platform such as Webex and made that process all the more urgent.
The pandemic was disruptive for all businesses. But for a healthcare organization, the disruption was like a shockwave. People now relied on their providers like never before, so MedStar acted quickly to start utilizing Cisco to support their remote workforce.
Kristina explains: “We had to move 4,000 people home who had not previously worked from home before.” This was something MedStar had never done, but “Cisco gave [MedStar] the opportunity to do that quickly. Overnight, really.” The adaptability and integrability of Webex were key during this period, Kristina says. “We chose Cisco during that time because it was a quick and easy implementation.”
But Cisco’s responsiveness and Webex Contact Center’s ease of implementation were not the only factors. “When we were looking at contact center solutions, we were looking for something that could allow us customization,” Kristina explains, and MedStar wanted to avoid “a solution where we could not make changes.” Kristina characterizes the MedStar contact center as “not gigantic,” having 600 concurrent agents.
Using Webex
Kristina says that, as a “midsize contact center,” Webex Contact Center has been a great fit for MedStar’s needs and has allowed for “the customizations we needed.” Furthermore, Kristina says, contact center agents find Webex “easy to use and intuitive.” They appreciate being able to see information about who is calling and why, which helps them better assist patients. Supervisors have also benefited, using live dashboards and reports to monitor the call center and utilize callback recording for coaching and quality control.
MedStar’s customers appreciate Webex Contact Center, too, though as Kristina explains, they don’t really realize it. “Our customers just want us to answer the phone, and Cisco really allows that to happen.” She describes Webex as a “very stable” and “reliable” solution that’s “easy to use.” Currently, MedStar primarily uses Webex for voice services, but the organization is looking to “utilize more chat and email integration.”
Metrics and Benefits
Since implementing Webex Contact Center, MedStar has centralized its call center operations, which has reduced handle and wait times. Kristina anticipates saving “20 seconds of handle time per call on a three-minute call” with an additional project that adds automation and integration with MedStar’s Electronic Health Record. On its own, 20 seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but consider the context. As Kristina puts it, when handling 15,000 calls a day, “20 seconds of handle time really adds up.” With this reduced average handle time, MedStar can take more calls and reduce agent time, freeing them up to do higher-level tasks.
MedStar now schedules over 10,000 appointments a week with the new system. The system has also enabled agents to work remotely or on hybrid schedules, which was not the case before. “This has really enabled not only an improvement to our patients, but an improvement to our agents. Now they have the flexibility to work outside of the office.”
MedStar Health and Cisco Going Forward
Apart from exploring the use of other channels like email and chat, MedStar is also looking forward to integrating Webex Connect with its electronic health record, which will allow agents to see patient information (such as lab results and appointments) without having to look it up manually. Kristina expects this integration to save even more time per call. The company is also interested in using Cisco AI Assistant to help agents with complex appointment scheduling protocols.
Kristina finishes the interview saying, “Cisco Webex Contact Center is a core part of our patient access strategy. It has enabled us to increase patient access and to centralize.”
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