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Amcom Software: A History with Hospitals

Healthcare Competition in Today’s Economy

Minneapolis-based Amcom Software (www.amcomsoft.com) has been providing communication solutions to the healthcare market for over 40 years.  While once Amcom’s product line was found exclusively in the call center, developments and acquisition have enabled Amcom customers to deploy solutions that touch nearly every area of the modern healthcare facility, from the physician on the move, to the bed-bound patient, to the hospital security department.  These include some of the tools used by 15 of the 19 hospitals voted by US News & World Report as the Best Hospitals in the United States.  These hospitals use Amcom technology solutions to enable hospital call center staff to respond more quickly, be more productive, reduce expenses, adhere to standard processes, and improve customer service.

With Amcom’s years of experience comes the understanding of the stratification of the healthcare community and how this affects the marketplace and competition among healthcare providers. 

Healthcare Competition in Today’s Economy: Concerns over the current condition of the economy is causing many to take a closer look at the ways business is done, as well as to re-evaluate many budget items that do not have a direct effect on revenue generating activities.  Included among these cuts may be some technology investments that would have had an impact on the level of service offered by the call center operator group.

Many leaders in the healthcare community know the impact that the medical call center has on the overall operations of the hospital.  In an age where patients have more say on which hospital gets their business, offering a consistently high level of service is vital.  The new trend in healthcare is to use technology to further patient services, safety, and overall loyalty to the brand by following the model set by the hospitality industry.

While larger hospitals prepare for economic challenges by utilizing technology to make more efficient use of full time equivalents (FTEs), smaller hospitals are often minimally staffed and do not have this luxury.  This financial competitive advantage is especially powerful in today’s economic conditions.  These mid-size healthcare facilities – typically defined as those with less than 250 beds and three or fewer operator positions – are lately considering a new angle for competing with the larger hospitals.  These facilities with an economic disadvantage are instead finding a foothold by competing on the level of service they can offer to patients.  It has become more vital than ever to establish a tangible brand identity and use this to create loyalty among both patients and physicians.

Those involved in the call center can attest that the hospital’s operator group acts as the first level of contact to the outside population and potential customer base.  Best-in-class providers recognize that a patient’s initial phone experience directly affects overall customer service.  The importance of the communications going in and out of medical call centers demands attention.

While the importance of medical call center increases, so do the demands placed upon this group.  On-call scheduling responsibilities, directory look-ups, and paging requests from internal staff members can make a busy operator’s life even more challenging.  Any message delivered to the wrong person or device can cause inefficiencies for most and be life-threatening for many.  Maintaining current personnel and scheduling information for hundreds of staff members, employees, contractors, and interns requires more time and resources than might be available.

The challenge has become providing these services within the constraints of ever tightening budgets. 

Tools of the Trade: Solutions providers that are ahead of the curve recognize the tools communication-focused hospitals need most in order to accomplish their goals.  To aid the mid-size market, some vendors now offer these tools bundled in a package exclusively for call centers of smaller hospitals.  There are three key components to this bundle: operator console, a browser-based directory and messaging product, and on-call scheduling tools.  Functioning together, this solution is proven to accomplish three goals: make operators more efficient, reduce internal “dial zero” traffic on the operator group, and transfer responsibility for on-call schedule maintenance from the operators to the individual departments.

Operator Console: An intelligent operator console is a tool which integrates with hospitals’ existing PBX to offer all the functionality of a phone set.  This console application guides operators through important tasks with easy-to-use screens that include all the necessary information to process communications efficiently and effectively.  To be effective, operator consoles must integrate disparate databases containing information on patients and staff, presenting it to operators with a few keystrokes.  From here, operators can perform directory look-ups and initiate paging messages or transfers as required.

Browser-based Directory and Messaging: A Web browser interface to the console directory serves as a data centralization point: a portal through which information can be both input and accessed.  Such a tool enables a credentialed user to log in anywhere at any time via a Web browser to view both their own on-call schedule and the schedules of others, perform directory searches, and send pages or messages.  Integration with the operator console database expands these capabilities beyond the operator group, allowing the call center to focus on offering better customer service or other revenue-driving activities.

On-call Scheduling: The on-call scheduling platform can be integrated with the console as well as the Web browser tool, serving to offload this task from the operator group by giving individual departments a simple system for editing and viewing on-call schedules.

By making on-call scheduling available via Web browser, any user with appropriate access rights has the ability to review their personal on-call schedules.  For staff members tasked with maintaining the on-call for an entire department, access to all appropriate schedules are readily available for editing as necessary.  Many hospitals see the true value of an on-call scheduling tool as expanding the responsibility for schedule maintenance out to individual departments rather than remaining with the operator group.  This represents a cultural change for many hospitals.  A tool that is simple and easy-to-use helps this adoption process.  Presenting these schedules in an easily referenced format, such as a standard calendar, makes review and editing simple and quick.

About Amcom Software: Minneapolis-based Amcom Software provides technology solutions for organizations that depend on speed, accuracy, and productivity to manage mission-critical, day-to-day, emergency and event-driven communications.  Amcom Software’s advanced solutions are used by more than 1,400 corporations and organizations in healthcare, education, hospitality, and government.  The CommtechWireless acquisition, along with the recent additions of XTEND Communications and Telident E911 solutions, have further solidified the company’s market leadership with the combined companies’ committed employees, broad expertise across several distinct markets, strong technologies, and growing client base.

For more information, call 800-852-8935.

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