Some Ideas for Enhancing Communications in Healthcare Organizations

Following up on my previous post requesting feedback on implementing UC technologies in the healthcare space, I reviewed some case studies (thanks for the links, everyone) and spoke with some vendors and end users. We are still finalizing our study and plan to talk to more people and review further sources, but I thought I would share some interesting insight that I received from a company called Software Advice.

Having recently installed a new IP-PBX system in their own office, Software Advice got thinking about ways medical practices could combine electronic health records with IP-PBXs. By combinging the two technologies, they think there is a great opportunity for medical practices to reduce telephony costs, improve office efficiency and potentially improve patient care.
They found out that, surprisingly, there are few medical-specific IP-PBX applications. So to spark some interest in the Asterisk development community, they decided to compile a list of seven applications that could be developed, including:

Find me, follow me – The system would prioritize an after-hours call based on the urgency of the situation. Emergencies could be immediately forwarded to 911. Calls from patients that recently had an ambulatory procedure might be forwarded to the physician’s mobile phone. All others might receive voicemail or the answering service. Urgency could be assessed not only by patient responses (e.g. pressing 1 for an emergency), but also by the content of recent encounters (e.g. yesterday’s botox injection).

Dunning Voicemails – If a patient hasn’t paid their balance after a given time period, this module automatically calls and leaves a voice message: “Dear [INSERT FIRST NAME], we recently noticed your balance of [INSERT OVERDUE BALANCE] has yet to be paid. If you’d like to pay now over the phone, press one. If you think you have received this message in error, press two.”

To read more, visit: Seven Great Applications for IP-PBXs in the Medical Practice