Smart Communications for GP Practice
Healthcare Phone Systems
Latest Case Studies
The last thing healthcare professionals want is to add to their patients’ or staff’s frustration and stress by providing a poor phone experience.
Identifying the needs of Healthcare Phone Systems
- To avoid long waits for calls to be answered
- Easy way to cancel to avoid missed appointments
- Enough lines for staff to be able to call out at all times
- High call quality and clarity to minimise risk of miscommunication
- To be contactable away from the practice, and connect homeworkers
- Option to record patient calls, all or on-demand
- Auto failover for patient calls in the event of power failure etc
IP Telephony in Healthcare
IP Telephony provides many benefits over traditional ISDN lines as well as significant cost savings. For healthcare, the ability to manage inbound calls before they arrive at the surgery, properly manage and queue calls at busy times, route urgent calls quickly and provide triage services with the comfort there will be no expensive phone bill…. has quickly become a necessity.
Auto Attendant
A calling menu can alleviate pressures on your reception team and ensure calls are answered based on urgency or priority. This can guarantee appointments, nurse consultations and physio requests and directed automatically to the correct people, increasing patient happiness and feedback.
Smart Mobility
On-call, home visits and out-of-hours emergencies are easily managed though smart mobility. With mobile bolt-on apps you can treat your smartphone as your desk phone with all the features you would expect at your desk is in your hands wherever you go.
Easy to use / Feature rich phones
We offer a broad variety of phones and apps that deliver high-quality voice communications as well as features to increase productivity. Phones can be personalised through several customisable options to allow each user their own preferred way to communicate.
Care Home Residents
SIP offers a Care Homes the ability for residents to retain their old home telephone number, or provide a new private DDI. As well as free UK call package and not to worry about bills and charging residents every month.
SIP for low cost and scaleability
SIP can be scaled-up and scaled down to handle a high volume of concurrent calls without waiting for an engineer’s visit. SIP has inclusive UK calls, therefore calls from the medical centre will be zero cost, this is significant as more telephone triage appointments will be the norm going forward.
Telehealth services
Telehealth is on the rise and surgeries are looking for a secure communication tool to deliver a remote patient experience. With features such as voice and video calls, as well as text messaging, file sharing, and screen sharing, a UC&C platform helps you seamlessly incorporate telemedicine into your practice.
On-Demand Call Recording
Call recording is essential for many organisations, It provides indisputable facts about every call that can be used to resolve misunderstandings quickly and effectively, to use as a training tool and improve customer service, to review and refine call handling performance or simply because it is a legal requirement. If patients are abusive, recording can be kept and used as evidence.
Russell Telecom can help you enhance patient communication, streamline workflows, and improve operational cost-efficiency.
The lines are now much more dynamic as we can now increase the number of lines we have as and when required, this proved particularly useful when the demand for telephone appointments drastically increased. The mobile apps have allowed us to continue functioning as a practice, whilst providing us with peace of mind that we can adapt working ways securely, with no disruption should it be required. The whole installation process was seamless and professional and carried out with no disruption to our normal daily working. This is the second Practice I have used Russell Telecom at and as before the service has been exceptional
CASE STUDY
Borchardt Medical Centre
Industry Medical
Solution NEC SV9100
Borchardt Medical Centre are a general practice located in South Manchester. The practice has five partners and two salaried GP’s, they also provide training and teaching with GP Registrars and Medical students.
An existing Russell Telecom customer since 2012, the practice was operating the NEC SV8100 traditional system, using ISDN30 connectivity along with a Mycalls ISDN Call Recorder.
Requirements
Borchardt Medical Centre were keen to adopt a more flexible solution given the unprecedented times of COVID-19. Russell Telecom took this on board and proposed an upgrade of traditional lines to SIP, to provide significant cost savings with free UK calls, essential now in the changing times of telephone appointments, combined with the capability of working away from the surgery with mobile bolt-on applications, something which was an essential feature going forward.
Solution
As part of the upgrade, Russell Telecom installed a dedicated voice internet connection for the SIP lines, increased the lines to 10 to meet the new demands, retaining some lines exclusively for outgoing calls only, enabling GP’s to operate during busy periods.
Borchardt Medical Centre were able to retain their initial hardware investment through our NEC replication service, a unique service allowing customers to retain a lot of existing hardware and handsets and advance to the new, award-winning SV9100 platform, thus keeping cost of a new system to a minimum.
A new highly featured Mycalls SIP Recorder was installed including a generous allowance against the old Mycalls ISDN recorder, and several mobile applications were provided, for users requiring mobility.
The benefits of using the mobile apps allows GP’s to work from anywhere as and when required. The mobile application is an extension to the telephone system, therefore all calls inbound and outbound are via the SIP lines, therefore calls are recorded and secure. Additionally, the mobile application can be programmed to present the practice number as the outbound number, not the actual mobile number.
Results
Borchardt Medical Centre are absolutely delighted with their new solution. Rob Douglas, Practice Manager, said:
‘The lines are now much more dynamic as we can now increase the number of lines we have as and when required, this proved particularly useful when the demand for telephone appointments drastically increased. The mobile apps have allowed us to continue functioning as a practice, whilst providing us with peace of mind that we can adapt working ways securely, with no disruption should it be required. The whole installation process was seamless and professional and carried out with no disruption to our normal daily working. This is the second Practice I have used Russell Telecom at and as before the service has been exceptional'
Borchardt Medical Centre are absolutely delighted with their new solution.
We found the solution very sophisticated in terms of call routing. Converting our lines to SIP meant that our monthly call bill has reduced drastically as we now have free UK calls. These savings and being able to keep existing handsets have helped to offset the new technology investments. We now have centralised call recording which makes management of both practices seamless and easy to administer
CASE STUDY
Mowbray House Surgery
Industry Medical
Solution NEC SV9100
Mowbray House Surgery is a general practice located in Northallerton with further surgery located nearby in Hutton Rudby, and has a large number of patients across both practices.
As an existing Russell Telecom customer since 2014, both sites were operating the NEC SV8100 system with ISDN30 and ISDN2 connectivity. Both practices had Russell Telecom’s advanced call recording, however, the recording solutions were not centralised.
Requirements
Mowbray House Surgery needed to upgrade the telephony at both surgeries, to take advantage of the major benefits IP provides including moving the traditional lines to SIP and were delighted to partner with Russell Telecom once again.
It was essential that the upgrade provided a solution to both practices that ensured flexibility and merged both sites so they could centralise. The practice wanted to retain all existing numbers that could overflow between sites using advanced call distribution with centralised call recording. They also required the flexibility the new SV9100 provides for users requiring mobility, when away from the surgery.
Solution
Taking in to account their requirements, Russell Telecom identified the best solution was the excellent NEC replication service, where the customer can retain a lot of hardware and handsets and move the system across to the new, award-winning SV9100 platform.
The benefit of using replication is the cost-saving and return on investment. We replaced the old traditional lines with SIP and installed IP handsets at their Hutton Rudby surgery. The flexibility of SIP and the creation of a private IP voice network between the surgeries seamlessly connects the surgeries and allows for greater integration.
SIP trunks are so much more dynamic, we can temporarily increase the number of lines as and when required, this proved particularly useful during COVID-19 when the demand for telephone appointments greatly increased. Automatic call distribution meant patient wait times, especially during peak times were significantly reduced and easy management for staff.
Results
Mowbray House Surgery and Hutton Rudby Surgery are very pleased with their new solution. Ellie Rowlands, Deputy Practice Manager, said:
‘We found the solution very sophisticated in terms of call routing. Converting our lines to SIP meant that our monthly call bill has reduced drastically as we now have free UK calls. These savings and being able to keep existing handsets have helped to offset the new technology investments. We now have centralised call recording which makes management of both practices seamless and easy to administer”
The engineers were first-rate, efficient and helpful, managing to complete the whole installation with no disruption to the surgery
CASE STUDY
The Glen Medical Group
Industry Medical
Solution NEC SV9100
The Glen Medical Group is a busy general practice of 10,600 patients split between its two practices, which they run from the same site. The group has six GPs, one GP registrar, two nurses, one HCA and a supporting admin/reception team of 16.
The Glen had a shared system between its two practices on the same premises using IP Cisco handsets; cabling was also shared. Broadband connectivity was substandard and the quality of calls was affected, which is something the medical group was concerned about.
The Glen’s telephone number was a virtual number (for SIP), which meant a change of telephone number, which was a daunting prospect for the busy practices.
The Glen was delighted to partner with Russell Telecom; a company with over three decades experience of meeting the telecommunications needs of UK businesses and organisations.
Requirements
Russell Telecom carried out a thorough assessment of the practices’ existing system and of its specific requirements.
The Glen wanted a telecoms solution that would help to improve the overall customer experience. The group felt that its old system was not as efficient as a new system could be.
Russell Telecom identified the cutting edge NEC SV9100 telephone system as the perfect solution for the client.
Solutions
Russell Telecom installed an NEC SV9100 telephone system. The SV9100 are robust, feature-rich, Unified Communications enabled systems that are ideal for small and medium-sized businesses.
Each server is designed to help solve today's communications challenges and is built with your migration path in mind, so you can scale your communications as your business grows.
Russell Telecom delivered the SV9100 with an automated call distribution system, commonly known as an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). This is a telephony device that answers and distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals or agents within an organisation.
ACDs often use a voice menu to direct callers based on the customer’s selection, telephone number, selected incoming line to the system or time of day the call was processed.
Staff members are now able to log on to the system to help with reception duties during busy times. In addition, call queuing helped the call handling process by answering calls and informing callers they were in a queue.
Call recording was also introduced to ensure efficiency and for training purposes.
Finally, the innovative Patient Partner was installed to allow patients to book, cancel, check or change appointments at any time, night or day using their telephone. The system is a PC/Server based solution, which connects to the practice’s telephone system. It also integrates with their electronic appointment book, ensuring that it can operate in ‘real time’.
Results
The Glen Medical Group is very pleased with its new telecoms solution. Lynn Crutwell, Practice Manager, said:
“We are delighted with our new telephone system from Russell Telecom. From quote to installation the process was seamless.”
“The engineers were first-rate, efficient and helpful, managing to complete the whole installation with no disruption to the surgery.”
“The call recording feature has already helped us to resolve issues and identify staff training needs.”
“The monitoring feature is invaluable in planning staff requirements and improving efficiency for the practice.”
