A Physician's Real-time Solution for Unified Communications. for physicians and other medical professionals - benefits of Communications Service Providers CSPs - Industry Trend or Event

Health Management Technology, Sept, 1999 by Joe Gately

One number--finds you anywhere in the world.

Office phone systems, answering services, mobile phones, voice mail, fax machines and pagers are all powerful tools that enable physicians to communicate with patients, colleagues, HMOs, and others. Unfortunately, the proliferation of these tools has created a new problem of its own: managing disparate communications devices.

One must look no further than a typical business card to see just how confusing communications have become. In some cases, physicians list more than five numbers that a caller may have to dial in order to reach them.

Physicians are so mobile that pagers and cell phones have become the primary tools they use to stay in touch. However, important messages can still come in to their office voice mail, hospital phone, or fax. What physicians need today is a simpler approach, allowing them to use their communications tools more efficiently so they can do their jobs more effectively.

Physicians don't have to wait long--a new era in communications has begun. An emerging category of service providers focused on unified communications is coming to the forefront of the communications industry. These Communications Service Providers (CSPs) make it possible for busy doctors and healthcare professionals to maintain real-time contact with colleagues and patients using a single (local or toll free) phone number that ties together their telephone, cellular, pager, fax and even e-mail.

Can these unified services really keep up with the hectic pace in healthcare? Let's follow Dr. Karen Kelley (not her real name--names have been changed to avoid embarrassing her less efficient and less productive colleagues), a cardiologist at a major Northeast medical facility. She uses LinxConnect[TM], a universal number service from Linx Communications of Newton, MA, to maximize her time and productivity. Here is a typical day for Dr. Kelley:

6:15 a.m. Before heading over to the hospital to check on her patients, Dr. Kelley dials in to her LinxConnect account and makes herself "available," giving callers the ability to reach her directly instead of reaching her voicemail. Dr. Kelley has pre-programmed the service to simultaneously ring her office, home, cellular numbers and pager. Her universal number also serves as a fax number, allowing her to forward a received fax to a fax machine at her current location or to view the fax through the service's Web browser-based interface.

6:35 a.m. Dr. Kelley receives a call. Simultaneously, her numbers ring. She picks up her home phone and the system announces that her associate, Dr. Joseph, is calling. Dr. Kelley may chose to take the call, send it to voice mail or redirect it to an assistant, nurse, or colleague. She takes the call and makes plans to meet later at her office.

7:45 a.m. While making rounds at the hospital, Dr. Kelley's universal number beeps her pager and lets her know that her office is calling. She approaches the nearest phone, dials into her universal number and picks up the call. Before she had a universal number, Dr. Kelley's office would have to call several numbers before reaching her--her cell phone, the nurse's station, her hospital office, or worse, the hospital's main number to have her paged. Now, Dr. Kelley can be reached immediately to learn that her patient has just been admitted. She heads directly to the ER.

9:00 a.m. Dr. Kelley is driving back to her office when her cell phone rings. She answers and hears that a drug rep is holding. "Didn't I tell him to talk to Steve if he wants to send us samples of that new medication?" she thinks. She easily transfers the call to her colleague, Steve.

11:05 a.m. Back at the office, Dr. Kelley's pager beeps again and informs her that Dr. Mendez has faxed an anticipated journal article. Unfortunately, someone else is sending 30 pages of insurance forms to the office fax machine. Dr. Kelley goes to her PC, logs onto her universal number Web page and views the fax on-line. It's an interesting article and relevant to the presentation she and Dr. Cohen are giving next week. With the click of her mouse, she forwards it as an e-mail attachment to Dr. Cohen.

2:20 p.m. Dr. Kelley's desk phone rings and her universal number lets her know that Mr. Greene is holding. She takes the call and learns that Mr. Greene is anxious about an upcoming procedure being performed by Dr. Mandel. She presses a few buttons to conference Dr. Mandel into the call. The three of them are able to discuss Mr. Greene's concerns right away.

5:40 p.m. Before leaving her office, Dr. Kelley checks her voice moil. Before using the universal number, she had to check/Several voice mail-boxes--main office, cell phone, and hospital phone. Plus, because she wasn't able to manage these inbound calls as they arrived, she also had to listen to 10-20 messages on each system. Now she only has one mailbox where all her messages go, regardless of their origination. Also, because she was able to take or redirect calls as they came in throughout the day, she only has to listen to a couple of messages before going home.