Hospital call center software and communications technology

One in three hospitals has social media plan | Healthcare IT News

2010-01-31T08:48:00.000-06:00

One in three hospitals has social media plan | Healthcare IT News

VatorNews - Baby boomers embrace social networking

2010-01-31T08:41:00.000-06:00

VatorNews - Baby boomers embrace social networking

Epic Systems launches iPhone EHR app, Haiku

2010-01-13T11:40:00.001-06:00

Epic Systems launches iPhone EHR app, Haiku

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Healthcare Intelligent On-Call Schedules-going from paper to a web based system

2010-01-06T09:26:00.002-06:00

Many hospitals believe it or not still use a manual paper-based method to create, manage and use on-call schedules that follow doctors and nurses that are on-call for a particular shift. Many of these schedules are assembled by departments and sent to call center or switchboard operators that assemble all of the schedules during the overnight shift. We have worked with hospitals that had over 150 on-call schedules that had to be collated, assembled and bound in folders for the following day. To say that is inefficient is an understatement.

There are two major problems with a paper based on-call scheduling system. First is that as soon as its printed and bound, a change will be made rendering it out of date with incorrect information, meaning all of the distributed binders need to be updated by hand. The second problem is that the information only lives at the location of the binder. If a physician or nurse wants to know their schedule they need to call someone that has a binder or physically email have the information to each person. Both of these problems lead to inefficiency and waste.

By automating your on call scheduling system you solve both of these problems as well as gain functionality that you would never get with a paper based on call scheduling system. Automating your on-call schedules and creating web access you allow departments to create and update their own on-call schedules, allow physicians and nurses to view their schedules virtually anywhere in the world. Also, you can take advantage of the electronic format which allows paging, calling, emailing, and viewing of on-call schedules from any web-enabled device.

Our customers have helped us fine-tune our automated on call scheduling package. We have developed dozens of new features since rolling out this product over ten years ago. These features are now a vital part of the daily communications in hundreds of hospitals that use the Intelligent Series on-call scheduling package. Automated on-call scheduling packages have developed over time and are robust with features and most can handle even the most difficult, unique and detailed on-call schedules.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: healthcare,hospital,call center,communications,on-call scheduling,messaging

Twitter Can Play Key Role in Disaster Management

2010-01-01T07:47:00.001-06:00

Twitter Can Play Key Role in Disaster Management

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Study: Nurses unsatisfied with wireless networks, communication - FierceMobileHealthcare

2009-12-15T10:22:00.000-06:00

Study: Nurses unsatisfied with wireless networks, communication - FierceMobileHealthcare

"Top 10 Smartphone App Trends for 2010" from HealthLeaders Media

2009-12-14T09:10:00.002-06:00

Top 10 Smartphone App Trends for 2010

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Getting Hospital Communications off the Critical List | Interviews | ITBusinessEdge.com

2009-12-11T15:03:00.000-06:00

Getting Hospital Communications off the Critical List | Interviews | ITBusinessEdge.com

Houston hospital touts iPhone, AirStripOB app

2009-12-10T14:43:00.001-06:00

Houston hospital touts iPhone, AirStripOB app

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Case study: Communications-enabled business processes

2009-12-04T09:42:00.001-06:00

Case study: Communications-enabled business processes

URAC » Programs » Health Call Center Accreditation Program Overview

2009-12-02T09:29:00.002-06:00

URAC » Programs » Health Call Center Accreditation Program Overview

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Hospital embraces social media and keeps costs down | Article | Homepage articles

2009-12-02T06:50:00.001-06:00

Hospital embraces social media and keeps costs down | Article | Homepage articles

Vodafone: Not when but how for wireless health

2009-12-01T10:08:00.002-06:00

Vodafone: Not when but how for wireless health

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Healthcare Call Centers-Coping with Budget Cuts

2009-11-13T14:59:00.002-06:00

(Healthcare CALL CENTERS)–Coping with Budget cuts

Timely Tips for Telephone Triage Nurses

2009-11-11T11:30:00.001-06:00

While use of computerized guidelines is the standard of care in telephone triage, nurses can sometimes rely too heavily on these decision support tools and miss essential elements of a patient's problem. In her article in the September/October 2009 issue of AAACN ViewPoint, Carol Rutenberg notes that these tools should be used as blueprints, and that the nursing process should be used as in other types of nursing. She offers tips to adjust the nursing process for telephone triage nurses.

During assessment, the nurse can glean key information not only from the caller's words, but also from listening to the patient's breathing and speech, Rutenberg says. Callers can also provide objective measurements such as temperature, blood pressure, and weight as well as describe lacerations and amount of bleeding. Rutenberg writes, "A good rule of thumb is that anything nurses can do with their eyes, hands, or nose, callers can do…with adequate direction from the nurse."

During each call, the telephone triage nurse must identify a problem as emergent, urgent, or routine, develop a plan of care that the patient is likely to follow, and implement that plan. This continuity of care is an essential part of the telephone triage nurse's role.

Finally, to evaluate the interaction, the nurse must have a plan to determine if the patient got better. If not, the nurse must reassess him or her, revise the plan of care, implement the new plan, and reevaluate. Rutenberg says doing a thorough assessment, anticipating the worst possible scenario, and erring on the side of caution are key to successful telephone triage.

("Telephone Triage: Timely Tips"; Carol Rutenberg, RNC-BC, MNSc; AAACN ViewPoint; September/October 2009; www.aaacn.org)

How unified communications can improve the contact centre | Call Centre Helper

2009-11-04T11:28:00.000-06:00

How unified communications can improve the contact centre | Call Centre Helper

This is a very good article on both Unified Communications and Collaboration in a call center. 1Call has a hospital customer that has all of their operators working from home. Since they can't communicate verbally or with hand signals they rely on instant messaging to communicate with each other. 1Call is continuing to build communications tools to accommodate our hospital customers that are moving toward off premise or home based call center and switchboard operators.

Upgrading to VoIP in the Call Center

2009-11-02T15:32:00.000-06:00

This article was written by Paul Hanson with AMTELCO and published in the November 2009 issue of Connections Magazine Connections Magazine November 2009

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is here to stay. It has made steady progress in replacing traditional telephone lines in businesses and in homes. It eventually will dominate the marketplace as more people embrace the benefits and features of VoIP technology.

Using software on your call center's workstations along with a broadband Internet connection allows you to bypass the traditional local, long distance, and international telephone carriers. This can result in significant savings on operational costs. But it would be costly to jump into the deep end of the VoIP pool feet first. Implementing VoIP in a call center a little at a time enables you to learn the lay of the land and pick and choose your changes.

You essentially are faced with two choices: VoIP-enabling your current equipment, or building up a new system through a separate gateway. There are advantages and reliability gains in having VoIP technology native to your existing call center system. You can use your current equipment by adding a VoIP interface board or similar bridging device to your current system configuration; a number of manufacturers offer these products.

When considering this option, look for a product that is certified to integrate with multiple switch providers. Consider the vendor's commitment to developing its VoIP solutions, and pay close attention to the product's call capacity and its ease of integration with your current equipment.

How did it all start? The history of VoIP can be traced to 1994 when a small Israeli company, VocalTec, developed and patented what many believe to be the first Internet-based telephony software in the marketplace.

VocalTec's Internet Phone software was designed to run on home PCs and, like many of the PC phones available today, it utilized sound cards, microphones, and speakers. The VocalTec solution was built on the H.323 protocol instead of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) that dominates the field today.

VocalTec had a measure of success with Internet Phone, which led to a highly successful IPO in 1996. VocalTec continues today as a provider of VoIP-based solutions. Its media servers and gateways compete in the global marketplace with product offerings from Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, and other heavy hitters in the computer telephony league.

A major obstacle facing VoIP in 1994 was the minimal market penetration of broadband service. Consequently, VocalTec's groundbreaking software required a modem, which resulted in poor voice quality when compared to a normal telephone call. Nonetheless, by 1998 VoIP traffic represented approximately 1 percent of all U.S. voice traffic. The roster of entrepreneurs creating devices which enabled PC-to-phone and phone-to-phone communication steadily expanded.

Technology giants such as Cisco and Lucent began introducing equipment that could route and switch VoIP traffic. As a result, VoIP traffic accounted for more than 3 percent of all U.S. voice traffic by 2000.

Audio quality issues were rectified as methods were developed to prioritize VoIP traffic over data traffic and to ensure reliable, clear sounding, unbroken telephone calls. Consequently, revenue from VoIP equipment sales reached $3 billion by 2005 and topped $8.5 billion by the end of 2008. This growth was primarily driven by the increasing availability of low-cost unlimited calling plans and the abundance of enhanced and useful telephony features made possible by VoIP technology.

How do I choose? The deciding factor in selecting a VoIP service provider is Quality of Service (QoS). Choose a provider with a reputation for supplying. Make sure your call center's network is set up to handle it.

VoIP services tend to be less expensive than the same types of services provided under the old TDM transport media. Due to the nature of the transport mechanism, telcos and governments tend to view VoIP services as data traffic, so taxation and regulation are less than that imposed on traditional telephone traffic.

That's not to say that telephone-operating companies are not catching on. Operators of wholesale and retail long-distance networks are migrating their legacy trunking networks to VoIP-based Next-Generation Networks (NGNs) to reduce their operating costs and enhance their service flexibility. At the same time, VoIP service providers are looking for more cost-effective solutions to the task of connecting their networks to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This all adds up to making acquiring VoIP technology through your telco considerably more flexible.

Now call centers can operate telephone numbers from any LATA, geographical areas in which the local telephone companies are permitted to carry both local calls and long distance toll calls. This makes it possible for VoIP-equipped call centers to get essentially free calls when the calls terminate "on-net" within your local telco LATA.

VoIP also brings greater usage and efficiency to your telco access facilities. Where today a PRI circuit can carry twenty-three conversations before rolling over traffic to another circuit, VoIP technology presents a much larger pipe.

The following call volumes for various VoIP connections are conservative computations. The g.711 Codec uses 64K per talk path and is compatible with faxing. The g.729 Codec uses 14K per talk path and is not compatible with faxing.

      Pipe                 g.711                g.729

      1.5 Mbps          24 calls            110 calls

      10 Mbps           156 calls           714 calls

      100 Mbps         1560 calls         7140 calls

When buying a single VoIP pipe, you will spend less per unit of traffic and pay less in local, state, and federal taxes. Plus, with a VoIP pipe the VoIP-to-data traffic ratio is elastic. When call volumes are low, data traffic gets to use the express lane. Typically, this type of access also allows near real-time bandwidth expansion during the course of a phone call.

A VoIP platform provided by your telco usually is associated with a highly functional Web portal that enables a much greater degree of monitoring and control of your account and services, using only a convenient Web browser.

What's in it for me? A number of opportunities are presented once you have your call center on the VoIP fast track:

You are well on the way to creating a multisite phone system.
You are in a position to convert your operator audio from the hardwired traditional method to a TCP/IP-based system.
You can bring in individual DID lines, or blocks of local DID numbers, from other cities and countries, creating a virtual global presence for your business.
You can backhaul an entire PRI circuit from a distant city to a switch in your home city.
You are situated to provide toll-free connections to the call center infrastructure for remote and work-at-home agents.
You are positioned to have the call center provide value-added call processing on inbound calls, depending on the additional capabilities of your VoIP gateway, such as one-number call forwarding.
You have the ability to create virtual tie-lines to network your site and share traffic with other call centers for higher volume clients.
You can establish a network-level fail-over system to redirect calls to an alternate location. Combined with one-number call forwarding and real-time switch backup, this will provide a level of redundancy and disaster preparedness that previously was beyond reach.

A word of caution, however: When you set up your VoIP infrastructure, take the time to make sure that calls coming into your system over the Internet cannot be routed back out to the PSTN via your PRI circuits and POTS lines. Monitor your VoIP traffic regularly with an eye for multiple calls to locations that doesn't concern your business.

Paul Hansen is a senior software developer for Amtelco. He was instrumental in the development of Amtelco's SIP-based VoIP call center products.

Vocera, Motorola create smartphone for hospitals

2009-10-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

Vocera, Motorola create smartphone for hospitals

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WFMY News 2's Flu Central Call Center Opens This Morning | digtriad.com | Triad, NC | The Good Morning Show News Article

2009-10-21T07:17:00.000-05:00

WFMY News 2's Flu Central Call Center Opens This Morning | digtriad.com | Triad, NC | The Good Morning Show News Article

Business-academic partnership puts public health students on CDC front lines | Healthcare Finance News

2009-10-15T13:14:00.001-05:00

Business-academic partnership puts public health students on CDC front lines | Healthcare Finance News

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CDC | Preparedness Resources for Hospitals

2009-10-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

CDC | Preparedness Resources for Hospitals

Amtelco's 1Call Division offers a number of different communications tool for hospitals to use in emergency situations. The RED ALERT emergency notification system helps you react quickly in all types of urgent situations. For more information visit RED ALERT Emergency Notification System for Healthcare Organizations

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Smarter Healthcare: How Social Media is Revolutionizing Your Doctor Visits

2009-10-06T08:48:00.001-05:00

Smarter Healthcare: How Social Media is Revolutionizing Your Doctor Visits

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Allina Prepared for H1N1/Swine Flu using call center as part of plan

2009-10-05T13:58:00.006-05:00

This video shows the use of Allina's call center as part of H1N1 planning. The video is from Kare 11 in Minneapolis/St. Paul and was also posted on Allina's news blog at Allina news blog The video will play after a short advertisement.

Evergreen Hospital Medical Center Sets Up H1N1 Information Line at 425-899-4161

2009-10-02T06:43:00.001-05:00

Evergreen Hospital Medical Center Sets Up H1N1 Information Line at 425-899-4161

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Buying a Hospital Call Center system? Don’t forget about the applications and integrations.

2009-09-28T11:48:00.005-05:00

As hospital call centers evolve from simple call routing, answer and transfer and reporting system, buyers should think more strongly about what specific applications and HIS integrations a vendor has to offer.
Healthcare organizations and hospitals have specific needs, integrations, and applications that don’t exist in other environments. So before selecting a call center or PBX operator console, a vendor should see what healthcare applications they have available.
Some important factors to consider include:

• HL7 information directories
• On-call scheduling directories
• Paging integrations
• Appointment taking call scripts
• Knowledge of HIPAA , The Joint Commission, and EHRs

The last thing a hospital call center customer should have to do is teach the vendor about the hospital or healthcare industry.

IceRocket Tags: Hospital,call center software,healthcare,medical,communications