Case Study: Area Health Service

Profile

One of the NSW area health services required a replacement for an existing doctor consultation system. They currently use a freecall number which is forwarded manually each day by staff to the appropriate on-call doctor. The old system has no fall-back if the doctor is busy or otherwise unavailable. Ideally it would allow rostering on and off of available staff and the ability to easily update health or community announcements.

Technical Issues/Challenges

A system was required which allowed a simple roster system for on-call personnel. It could also use an interactive voice response menu for health or community announcements. A built-in conference call facility would allow the caller to conatct multiple personnel if necessary. The ability to call out other people when in-conference would also be an advantage.

Solution

The ALERTS / Comms Centre system has been selected for the job. It meets all the challenges as above, as well as allowing staff meetings on line - an important consideration when they are generally widely dispersed. The system logs mean it can be interrogated later and voice recording means important calls are captured.

Whilst in-conference, a 'speed dial' capability has been set up to allow fast contact with popular external numbers and the administration of the system allows roster notification for staff active on the day.

Benefits

The health service now has a solution which does what they want, rather than make their work more difficult. It makes the rostering much easier to organise and allows emergency calls to be activated very easily. The on-call doctor can be notified by the system and if unavailable, the next in order of priority can be notified. Being able to also hold staff meetings on the system saves both time and money for all concerned.

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