Customer Story: Parkview Medical Clinic

Founded in 1972, Parkview Medical Clinic is run by five family physicians in New Prague, Minnesota.  Recently, Parkview moved into a new building and decided to update and expand their facilities to handle electronic medical records (EMR).  The move was the impetus to investigate the integration of their voice and data services with a new phone system also.

Encompass Unified Communications was selected for the integrated, hosted, solution it would provide as well as for the efficiencies it would bring, particularly for the receptionists with enhanced call management capabilities.  Parkview Medical Clinic chose to add a customized Auto Attendant console to their Encompass system.  The Auto Attendant console helps the receptionist monitor the workflow of the busy clinic as calls come in.  Compared to their old system, Encompass also utilizes a Dynamic T1 to make available additional phone lines, which allow for more simultaneous calls.  Receptionists have the flexibility to set up how the call should be handled.  When patients call, through PC screen pops, their information is brought into view.  This eliminates staff time to manually look up lab results.  According to Daniel Berg, M.D, “We reduced our business office by one person, due in part to the efficiency of our Encompass communication system despite a patient volume increase.  Also, the Encompass Technical Support Center has been excellent.”  Berg did not feel the operational efficiencies would have been possible with a premised-based PBX.

To increase employee productivity, the nurses and doctors are equipped with Cisco’s wireless VoIP phones.  The functionality of the Cisco wireless phones allows them to continue their close contact with employees and patients in their new, much larger building.  

Parkview Clinic’s productivity has also increased with Encompass’ unified messaging and Single Number Reach functionalities.  The unified messaging solution allows for email, voicemail and faxes to be combined into a single mailbox.  Time is saved contacting Nursing Homes in particular.  Previously, delays were introduced when faxes were filed in baskets waiting for a response.  With Encompass unified messaging, faxes show up in employee’s email and return faxes from doctors eliminate a lengthy game of phone tag and create a record of the doctor’s response at the same time.   Encompass’ Single Number Reach “SNR” allows for callers to get in touch with doctors no matter where they are.    Parkview found that SNR made it much easier for drugstores, hospitals and other clinics to reach the individual doctors

An unexpected and very pleasant benefit for Parkview Medical Clinic was the peace and quiet Encompass brought to their office because an overhead paging system was not needed.  Berg noted, “Going VoIP with Encompass was a good move for our clinic!  It gives us the possibility in the future of integrating EMR data and VoIP data to enhance patient care.”

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