In most industries, SLAs are a sign of maturity. They show that a company has a system. Tickets are tracked, responses are timed, and resolutions are measured against internal benchmarks. That’s useful when the service request is routine or the impact is low.
But in healthcare, that logic breaks down.
A one-hour reply time looks fast on a dashboard. But if a provider can’t access a patient chart or a caregiver can’t complete a prescription refill, an hour can feel like forever. The issue isn’t just about response time. It’s about how long someone has been waiting before they even reached out and how much longer they’ll have to wait to get unstuck.
This is where most platforms get it wrong. They measure the support team’s clock, but not the customers.
Clinical urgency doesn't follow SLA logic
There are no minor issues when care is on the line. Something as simple as a login error or a frozen portal can delay treatment. That delay may be invisible in your systems, but it’s deeply felt by the person on the other end. Every hour without an answer increases anxiety and erodes trust.
Healthcare doesn’t operate in neat cycles. The same issue that feels low-priority in an operations center may feel life-altering to a patient trying to manage care in real time. That’s why support needs more than technical compliance. It needs empathy, context, and the ability to break the pattern when the moment demands it.
Fast isn't enough. It must be the right kind of fast.
At Nectar, we help HealthTech clients reframe their service models around impact, not just intervals. That means designing support systems that:
Identify and flag signals of urgency early, even in routine-looking requests
Route tickets based on real-world context, not just tags or subject lines
Give agents the authority to push issues forward when the emotional weight is clear
Use SLAs as a floor, not a ceiling
A 24-hour resolution time might sound reasonable for a broken button. It doesn’t work for a patient in limbo. That’s why escalation logic needs to do more than follow keywords. It should consider repetition, language, tone, and timing. A second or third outreach should never be treated like a fresh inquiry.
The customer isn’t measuring you by your SLA
When people are reaching out for help, they aren’t tracking how quickly you respond. They’re asking whether your platform works and whether you care. Meeting a deadline doesn’t matter if the response doesn’t solve anything or if the interaction feels transactional.
Too often, support teams check the SLA box and move on. Meanwhile, the customer is still confused, waiting for an update, or looking for a human to step in. From the inside, the system says “resolved.” From the outside, it looks like no one showed up.
Good support isn’t just fast. It’s situational
That doesn’t mean every issue needs to be treated like an emergency. It means having the judgment to know which ones do. And that judgment needs to live inside the support team. Not just in the ticketing system.
With the right training, structure, and incentives, teams can move quickly when it matters most. They can prioritize the person, not just the ticket. And they can do it without creating chaos or bottlenecks behind the scenes.
SLAs are still useful. But they can’t be the whole story. Especially not in healthcare, where urgency isn’t a service tier. It’s the reality of the work.
