Erie Family Health Center is the First Organization to Ever Receive the Oral Health Champion Award at the National Primary Oral Health Conference 

At the National Primary Oral Health Conference held November 2-4, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee, Erie Family Health Center received the distinguished Oral Health Champion Award. The honor was given as part of the National Network for Oral Health Access (NNOHA) Outstanding Achievement awards at the annual conference.

In the past, this particular award has been presented to individuals; however, this year Erie Family Health Center was honored as the first organization to receive the Oral Health Champion Award. Each year NNOHA presents awards to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to high quality oral health care for underserved populations. The four awards honor presented are the Lifetime Achievement Award, Oral Health Champion Award, Outstanding Leadership Award and Outstanding Clinician Award.

Erie Family Health Center was presented the Oral Health Champion Award which honors the vision, leadership and contributions of the organization "I'm honored/excited that NNOHA is recognizing the hard work of the people who went from 'zero to sixty' with launching Erie's oral health services over the past five years," says Dr. Gus Souri, Oral Health Program Director and dentist.

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Erie Family Health Center serves nearly 30,000 patients each year; however, for each one of these tens of thousands individuals walking through Erie's doors there is a protocol to follow-and the first step is the most important.

 

To get our patients into our waiting rooms and onto the path to better health, they first must dial 312.666.3494 and reach Erie's Call Center. With this phone call, patients reach one of the 12 full time employees who handle around 2,000 calls per day, over 160 calls each. In 2008, Erie's Call Center staff spoke to over 220,000 patients. To help aide the staff in their important role, Erie's Call Center, which is located at Erie West Town Health Center, was renovated and opened to receive its first patient phone call in the new facility on November 18, 2009.

This new office space allows each operator a more professional atmosphere, updated computers and a state-of-the-art telephone system. The new space also is large enough to hold three more Call Center Operators which will increase the number of patient calls Erie is able to answer. Not only has the Call Center staff seen a change in their new office surroundings, but also in the quality of care they provide to Erie patients. Over the past five years, the biggest improvement is the percentage of abandoned calls dropping from 25 percent to only three percent. This means for every 100 patients calling, only three hang up before the Call Center operator reaches them. The call wait time has also decreased from an average of 15 minutes to only three minutes. 
  
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