Best Practices: IP Telephony in Healthcare Settings
IP Telephony in Healthcare Settings
These days, many health centers—from smaller clinics to the largest hospitals—are focused on measuring patient satisfaction. Beyond the normal desire of any business to keep customers happy, health centers that get government funding are required to deploy regular surveys to gauge how patients rate their services. Scores depend on the quality of care the entire staff provides, from operators and administrators to nurses and physicians, and is often measured using metrics, such as how long patients must wait to be treated or how many transfers each patient must go through when calling their physicians or administrative offices. After all, nobody wants to keep dialing various numbers or wait a long time on the phone to make an appointment or inquire about a bill.
Such specific measurement mechanisms obviously pressure practices to act efficiently. Unified communications and voice-over-IP (VoIP) technologies can help healthcare IT organizations make service improvements in these areas while realizing cost savings. These systems let clinics serve patients faster by enabling quick and easy call transfers among buildings or departments while providing robust information about callers; for example, a UC system can provide screen pops in which administrators, doctors, nurses and operators can post comments to the notes section as part of the call record. Unified messaging can enhance employee productivity via dozens of time-saving features and by efficiently recording patient data, making paper trails a thing of the past. These systems also help the organization make up-to-the-minute staffing decisions based on logging and reporting on call volume.
No wonder, then, that when healthcare organizations look to make technology upgrades, the phone system is often a prime target. In this InformationWeek Analytics Best Practices report, we’ll cover best practices for health clinics and medical practices looking to choose and implement UC systems that will improve patient satisfaction while saving money.
Table of Contents
3 Author's Bio
4 Executive Summary
5 Needs Both Obvious and Obscure
6 Figure 1: Core Components of Next-Generation E-Mail and Universal In-Box
8 Figure 2: Synchronization with In-House Systems
9 Easy Sell
10 9 Steps for Ensuring Readiness
11 Figure 3: Primary E-Mail System
16 Figure 4: Videoconferencing Policy
17 Vendor Selection Process
17 Features: What Do You Really Need?
About the Author
Scott St. Clair is the president of Datamart, a leading unified communications technology consultancy and VAR based in the Northeast. For more than 35 years, Scott has held both technical and management roles and focused on providing cutting-edge UC systems while helping clients develop strategies to better align their communications technologies with their business strategies. His goal is to help companies solve business problems using practical, innovative technologies that are easy to use, manage and support. Scott can be contacted at stclair@datamart.com.
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