May 2020
Rother House Medical Centre provide a variety of clinics to 16,000 patients in Stratford Upon Avon, notably COPD, Phlebotomy, learning disability health and special commuter clinics, along with minor surgery and an on-site pharmacy.
Crisis Challenge
In conjunction with South Warwickshire CCG, Rother House Medical Centre decided to implement the Surgery Connect VoIP healthcare communications system, going live just in time for the practice to effectively manage the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis. Tom Ganner, Practice Manager at Rother House, commented: "We moved to VoIP at exactly the right time. It has enabled us to quickly and easily mobilise home working for all staff."
Tom also noted that the "headsets have been a revelation both for the softphone and for normal working in the practice. At a time when most consulting is done on the phone the GPs have very much appreciated having these so that they can type and talk at the same time. We have purchased considerable extra headsets from those provided originally as they have been so popular."
The Service
Surgery Connect includes the GP@Home option which provides all the functionality of the practice focussed telephony, but available to staff working remotely from home. The switch to remote working is seamless, with patients and staff interacting as they did pre-COVID-19.
Being a fully integrated service, Surgery Connect differs from the approach taken by some practices, hoping to improve their patient facing communications during the crisis, where a variety of bolt-on solutions were used in conjunction with existing telephony. With Surgery Connect practitioners can easily and quickly switch between audio and video interaction, with all relevant data being retained by the system and available for later review, making it: "easy to identify if any specific staff training is required due to the individual log on functionality."
The integration extends to call recording: "The benefits for all staff are that all calls are recorded even if working from home. Reception staff can receive calls from a group and redirect calls as easily as if they were in the building. The reports that the system offer are very comprehensive, allowing detailed analysis of demand and therefore capacity planning for handling calls."
Rother House Medical Centre Says
"Surgery Connect customer service is excellent and local support from the team is invaluable also.
"Programing of messages is extremely easy, which is just as well due to the number of times over the COVID-19 build up we have had to change our message.
"Implementation and training went smoothly and without hitch.
"Finally, the system has significantly reduced our telephone bill. We have also had very positive feedback from patients. Not one complaint!!!"
Tom Ganner
Practice Manager
Rother House Medical Centre
rotherhouse.org.uk
For further information on Surgery Connect please call Sales on 0333 332 0000.
