August 2019
Park Road Medical Practice is located in Wallsend, North Tyneside. In October 2018 Park Road took over Battle Hill Health Centre resulting in 9000 patients being cared for across two sites. They are a member of the Dementia Action Alliance and have achieved the 'You’re Welcome' primary accreditation fulfilling the quality criteria making health services young people friendly.
The Challenge
Sandra Dowling, Practice Manager at Park Road, needed to effectively meet the challenges of efficient communications across two sites, so required "a system which could work well and meant staff could be contacted no matter which branch they were working at. Incoming calls needed to be shared across both sites and answered by the next available member of staff irrespective of where the member of staff was working."
Additionally, upgrading the Park Road phone system would provide the practice with additional features not available in their dated system: "Our previous system at the main practice was over 20 years old and during this time technology had moved forward incredibly. We had no accurate way of knowing the volume of calls we were taking." Sandra required recording of all calls as a protection and training tool.
The Solution
Surgery Connect is enabling multi-site call handling across every level of practice integration from GP Hubs, Federations and PCNs (Primary Care Networks), through to CCG wide communications. Call handling can be configured using management interfaces, with graphical call flow also available using X-flow drag and drop configuration.
For Park Road, Surgery Connect's call recording "has been a blessing. We have on many occasions had to listen back to conversations which have assisted in patient complaints as well as training." All calls are stored securely encrypted and accessible to authorised staff.
Surgery Connect also fully integrates with the practice's EMIS clinical system providing multi-site communications enhanced by having call data and call recordings available directly from the patient's EMIS popup, minimising staff time on calls.
Park Road Medical Practice Says
"Staff really feel very supported knowing their calls are recorded, it's been especially useful during complaints and training.
"In comparison to other providers we felt Surgery Connect would fit into our practice and would also integrate with our clinical system.
"The training did not prepare us for understanding the whole system. However, we have since had a webinar which has looked at a few different things, meaning lots of areas have been explained further. The hardest part is deciding how you want a system configured, when you don’t know what the impact of that configuration means, but the more we learn about the system the more confident we will become.
"We have already recommended Surgery Connect to a neighbouring practice."
Sandra Dowling
Practice Manager
Park Road Medical Practice
parkroadpracticewallsend.nhs.uk
For further information on Surgery Connect please call Sales on 0333 332 0000.
