September 2021
Gateacre Medical Centre are a small GP practice based in Liverpool serving 2,400 patients. Services include nurse appointments and inoculations. The practice maintains a patient participation group.
The Challenge
Gateacre Medical Centre realised that their existing legacy system was no longer sufficient to support the practice communication needs. Practice Manager Lin Bennett recalls that "our previous telephony supplier was not able to provide the facilities or service we required.
"We also required a system that allowed us to easily work in a hot-desk situation, including a work from home option."
The Solution
Surgery Connect has provided the upgraded experience sought by many practices looking to move off their legacy phone systems. Not only does it provide a plethora of features and integration not available on legacy systems, but those features are equally available from anywhere within the practice, and with staff located anywhere, including working from home. Patients are unaware of the staff member's location, and all call data is attached to the patient record, with extensive practice wide call handling data downloadable in a variety of reports. Practices are sent a monthly report by default.
"Having moved from a system that was very limited in what it could do, Surgery Connect services have transformed our way of working."
X-flow is a graphical drag and drop interface that allows practices to easily create the ideal call flow for their team. By dragging icons, which include pop-up hints for guidance, linked by visual connectors, a call flow is created which can be tested before going live. As Lin observes: "X-flow allows us to tailor our messages to meet our needs and also allows us to inform our patients of local or national campaigns they may need to know about", with the added benefit that "having educational messages for patients to listen to before they reach a staff member has reduced the number of calls to the practice."
User consoles provide real time call handling data allowing Gateacre Medical Centre "to see how many calls are waiting at any time, and having the Patient Callback option is extremely beneficial, and has helped map our staffing levels at the busier times." Patient Callback allows patients to retain their position in the queue by requesting a call back.
Once the decision to move to Surgery Connect had been made, X-on engaged with the team at Gateacre Medical Centre to see what the installation would require. As Lin observes: "The telephony system itself speaks volumes along with quality of hardware provided. Don't worry if you need cabling work - X-on sort this out when they undertake a site survey. The team involved in the initial implementation were very helpful and knowledgeable. Setting up how we wanted our system to work, and porting our numbers, was quite an easy process. The main issue was exiting; taking a long time to port the numbers." The time needed for number porting varies.
"On go-live day we had two excellent engineers on site who ensured the switch from old to new supplier went without a hitch. After go-live, we had excellent support from the Surgery Connect team, any configuration issues we had were worked through and they provided excellent step by step training on-line."
Gateacre Medical Centre Says
"Surgery Connect provides us with a cloud based telephony solution that integrates with our clinical system; allows easy management of the X-flow set-up and messages; has call recording and is supported by a fantastic team.
"The new system has been received well and in the majority, feedback from both patients and work colleagues has been very positive.
"We have significantly reduced our telephony costs and feel assured that the service we receive from Surgery Connect is value for money.
"We are now 2 months down the line and it feels like we have used Surgery Connect forever.
"It's not just the fact that the telephony system provided works well, it is also the excellent customer service provision. 'Well done Surgery Connect team'.
"Surgery Connect was recommended to us by another Practice, and we would definitely recommend Surgery Connect to others."
Lin Bennett
Practice Manager
Gateacre Medical Centre
gateacremedicalcentre.nhs.uk
For further information on Surgery Connect please call Sales on 0333 332 0000.
