A hospital of this size thrives on communication – and it all converges in one place: the telephone switchboard. Evangelisches Krankenhaus Wesel shows how this burden can be noticeably reduced with HeroChat.

Evangelisches Krankenhaus Wesel

Evangelisches Krankenhaus Wesel is a specialist-care hospital and part of the Gesundheitscampus Wesel. With around 356 beds, roughly 1,400 employees and ten specialist departments, it treats more than 15,000 inpatients and around 31,000 outpatients each year. Every one of these treatments involves contact – calls, questions, appointment requests.

The challenge: a switchboard at its limit

A large share of calls is about the same topics again and again: opening hours, directions, the right point of contact, booking or rescheduling appointments. At peak times these routine questions tie up valuable time, the queue grows longer, and some calls go unanswered – especially outside office hours.

The solution: HeroChat with AI for the recurring questions

HeroChat answers the most common requests automatically – on WhatsApp and in web chat, around the clock. Contact details, opening hours, directions, routing to the right department and, above all, appointment bookings all run digitally, without anyone having to pick up the phone. Only the cases that truly need a human still end up on the line.

Model calculation: relieving the switchboard

  • Calls per day to the switchboard ≈ 1,500
  • of which routine questions HeroChat handles ≈ 40 %
  • calls offloaded per day ≈ 600
  • at ~3 minutes per call ≈ 30 hrs/day
  • savings potential per year (≈ €0.60/min) over €300,000

Fewer missed appointments thanks to online booking

Missed appointments cost twice over: the slot stays empty, and other patients wait longer. With online appointment booking and automatic WhatsApp reminders, patients book, reschedule and confirm their appointments themselves – conveniently and without a call. This noticeably lowers the no-show rate and makes operations more predictable.

Secured appointments, more patients cared for

With around 31,000 outpatient appointments a year, just five percentage points fewer no-shows means over 1,500 additional appointments used – more people cared for, less downtime and a noticeably calmer operation.

The result

Relieved staff, shorter waiting times on the phone, availability around the clock and fewer empty appointment slots. The telephone switchboard gains time for the matters that need genuine attention – and patients get answers faster, on the channel they already use.

The figures on call volume, time and cost savings are simplified model calculations for illustration and are based on publicly available key data about the hospital. The actual values depend on call volume, processes and staff costs.

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