Why caller ID accuracy matters after healthcare mergers and acquisitions

A regional health system acquires 15 primary care practices across three states. The integration team has six months to consolidate systems, align operations, and maintain patient care quality. EHR migration gets a project manager. Supply chain standardization gets a task force. Financial systems get a dedicated workstream.

Nobody, however, is tracking what patients see when the health system calls.

Each acquired practice has its own phone service, its own caller ID, its own patient base used to seeing a familiar name on their screen. After the acquisition, patients start seeing unfamiliar numbers. Some see the old practice name that no longer exists. Others see the parent organization they’ve never heard of. Most just see “Unknown Caller.”

They don’t answer. Which isn’t surprising.

Seventy-six percent of Americans won’t answer unrecognized numbers.

When patients can’t identify their healthcare provider, appointment reminders go to voicemail. Lab result notifications get ignored. No-shows cost the industry over $150 billion annually. Caller ID fragmentation makes that worse precisely when integration teams are trying to maintain operational continuity.

The technical fix exists. The challenge is that most organizations don’t realize they need it until patients stop picking up.

Why healthcare can’t ignore the caller ID problem

Healthcare fraud cost Americans over $16 million in the first quarter of 2024 alone, largely via phone scams. Bad actors spoof caller IDs to impersonate Medicare representatives, hospital billing departments, and insurance providers.

Legitimate healthcare calls get caught in that defensive posture. And mergers and acquisitions (M&As) enhance the conditions for breakdown.

Consider that regional health system with 15 newly acquired practices now has appointment reminders going out from dozens of different numbers. A patient gets a lab result notification from a number registered to the practice’s old name. Another sees the corporate headquarters number they’ve never called. The IT team can’t fix it quickly because each practice uses a different carrier.

Integration planning requires “communication strategy” and “ensuring no gap in billing or payments,” but caller ID rarely makes that list. Yet, patients need these calls to work.

The technical challenge behind caller ID fragmentation

The problem starts with how caller ID gets assigned.

When each practice was independent, they purchased phone service from local carriers. Those carriers issued caller ID tied to the specific business name and location. It worked because patients knew the practice, recognized the name, and answered.

Acquisitions break that system. Ownership changes, but caller ID doesn’t update automatically. The acquiring organization must contact each carrier individually to request changes. Geographic spread makes it worse, as practices in different states often use different carriers entirely. Each one requires separate coordination. IT teams get stuck managing a process that’s slow, manual, and outside their normal scope.

Mobile devices turned this from an inconvenience into a crisis. Twenty years ago, landlines didn’t show much caller information. Today, smartphones display caller details prominently before the first ring. Patients decide whether to answer in seconds. If the name doesn’t match what they expect, the call gets ignored.

What a unified approach looks like

The solution requires centralized management across carriers and locations. Technology exists that handles this without forcing organizations to replace their existing contact center platforms. Solutions integrate with systems healthcare organizations already use and work alongside them rather than requiring wholesale infrastructure changes.

Timing determines whether this becomes a smooth transition or a reactive scramble. Addressing caller ID during integration planning prevents the problem from surfacing as patient complaints months later.

Unfortunately, the challenge extends beyond healthcare. Distributed organizations across industries face the same problem. Regional retailers, multi-site service providers, and contact centers serving customers across geographies, among others, all need consistent caller identification. As organizations expand communication channels to include text, chat, and email alongside voice, patients and customers expect reliability across every method of contact.

Implementing unified communications at scale

Managing caller ID fragmentation across multiple carriers, locations, and legacy systems is complicated enough. Doing it while maintaining operations during an active integration makes it harder. That’s where SHI comes in.

Our unified communications services help organizations evaluate their current telephony infrastructure and identify where caller ID fragmentation creates risk. Our vendor-neutral engineers work with IT teams and contact center supervisors to assess existing platforms, carrier relationships, and integration requirements. We guide organizations through options that fit their infrastructure and ensure new solutions work with what’s already in place.

Our approach combines voice, video, and text platforms into workflows that improve productivity and enhance customer experience. We help organizations implement solutions that integrate with their existing contact center systems and scale as they grow.

The focus stays on creating reliable, consistent patient communications without adding operational complexity.

Getting communications right during growth

Healthcare M&A activity continues to reshape how care gets delivered.

Integration teams focus on clinical systems, financial platforms, and operational processes. Those priorities are justified. But communications infrastructure determines whether patients can access the care those systems are designed to provide.

When patients can’t identify who’s calling, they don’t answer. Then, appointments get missed, follow-ups fail, and the operational efficiency that justified the acquisition erodes.

NEXT STEPS

Do you need help resolving caller ID fragmentation or building a unified communications strategy? Reach out to an SHI expert today.

Organizations that treat caller ID as a priority maintain the patient relationships that make growth sustainable. And that’s one step toward ensuring those patients answer the phone when it rings.