Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center-connects community
Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center is part of the Caritas Christi Health System, a network of health services that includes six hospitals, home and hospice care, elder care, mission outreach and education services. The Medical Center developed a "Service Excellence Plan" to enhance the level of service provided by the Medical Center.
Streamlining communications
One way to improve service to the Medical Center’s patients, staff and the general public was to streamline internal communications (voice, pocket paging etc.). They also needed to simplify and improve communications between the other five hospitals, data center and corporate offices. The team wanted to replace the Medical Center's printed telephone directory, which was difficult to update.
A Voice for service
The Medical Center evaluated how the use of a voice recognition system could improve communications throughout the hospital. After reviewing several vendors, they called on Parlance to speech enable their operations. The managed service enabled on-site employees to dial one number, say the name of their destination and get connected 24/7. Remote employees access the Service from any telephone by dialing a dedicated number.
Extending the voice network
NameConnector® has extended the reach of St. Elizabeth’s voice network from a set of specific physical connections to a virtual list of destinations. Employees now have appropriate access to over 4,000 destinations including: office phones and pagers, as well as, departments and employees located at the corporate offices.
Easy installation
Prior to installation, Parlance worked with the Medical Center to produce a comprehensive calling plan of destinations, caller groups, and private directories that would be available to callers. Data from multiple sources were collected and edited using automated administration tools. Ongoing directory maintenance is handled by administrators using desktop web tools to make additions, changes or deletions.
Saving time
"Our Medical Director says, he "loves the system." "Staff development managers have estimated that the system saves each of them at least an hour per week, now that they do not have to look up telephone numbers,” said Nancy Aldrich, former HIMSS President and Telecommunications Manager at Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.
Service excellence
The service offloads thousands of calls each day and the numbers continue to increase markedly as more people are exposed to the simplicity and accuracy of the system. The elimination of routine internal transfers and access to pocket paging has resulted in an improved level of service to all St. Elizabeth’s callers and has provided employees with an easy, direct way to connect. Today, all calls are answered on the first ring and are connected within a few seconds with an accuracy rate of over 90%.
Monitoring performance
Caller connection accuracy is assured due to the constant monitoring and tuning provided by Parlance’s managed service. Parlance’s support team provides and reviews customized web reports with the Telecom Group to determine what, if any, measures should be taken to improve caller connection rates across the organization.
“Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center has had Parlance’s service installed for less than one month and already the acceptance of the Service has been extremely positive." Nancy Aldrich, former HIMSS President and Telecommunications Manager at Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.