Why Scripting for Managing Calls in a Healthcare Call Center?

Scripting can be used to guide agents or switchboard operators through the flow of a patient customer conversation. A script enables the agent to drive the dialogue with the customer, and ensures that the agent is able to complete a customer interaction to the call center’s – and the customer’s – satisfaction. A script helps agents respond to a caller’s requirements, and prompts the agent to ask – and obtain answers to – additional questions that will enable a call center to deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction.

A robust scripting application provides the ability to access all customer information appropriate to the call – sometimes acquiring that data from multiple databases, including electronic medical record (EMR) databases – and display it in a format that is easy for the agent to understand. It also provides the ability to update customer information and to collect new data that can help the call center provide superlative customer service.

Scripting in a medical or hospital call center provides a number of benefits:

· Customer Relationship Management. Scripting helps maintain a consistent quality of customer interaction, each and every time a customer makes contact, regardless of which agent handles the call. Scripting also provides an easy and efficient way to collect additional customer information that not only helps ensure the customer’s satisfaction with that call, but also enables the agent to enhance the overall relationship with the customer.

· Increased Agent Productivity. Because all of the customer information that an agent needs is presented in a clear, concise format with no toggling through multiple data screens, agents can complete a customer transaction quickly. Scripting also provides talking points for agents, so they know what to say and when to say it.

· Reduced Agent Training Time. Many agents in a call center have multiple skill sets to handle different types of calls – appointments, calls for a doctor’s office, customer service, and so on. Each type of call typically needs to be handled slightly differently, so scripts should be customized for each doctor and call type, ensuring agents get the needed information on every call. The scripts then lead the agent through different types of caller transactions with minimal training, because the script provides the correct data to handle the call and helps the agent navigate through the call flow. And, because a script can provide instructional information on handling a call, scripting can enable a call center to overflow calls to less skilled back-up agent groups more effectively during periods of peak calling.

· Enhanced Agent Effectiveness. Customers want to have their needs met the first time they make contact – they don’t want to be told to call another number, or to be transferred to another department, or to wait for a callback. Because a script can bring together information from a number of different databases, agents are provided with all of the information they need, when they need it, to handle the customer contact immediately.

Healthcare organizations can use scripting to enhance each customer’s call experience. A variety of call types, including patient information, physician referral, physician answering service, and code calls, can all be handled more efficiently, resulting in a reduction of errors using scripting for enhanced call flow navigation.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division. Matt has worked at Amtelco for over 20 years and has held numerous positions, including Southeast regional salesmanager, executive suite market development, and marketing manager.

Selecting a Healthcare Call Center Platform for the Present…and the Future

When selecting a call center platform for your healthcare organization, it is important to consider a number of factors, including:

· your current needs

· internal hospital systems that will need to interface with your call center

· future needs

· additional products or services from the prospective vendors

Following are some ideas to help you evaluate the various platforms.

What are your call center needs?

Many hospitals consider the switchboard a call center, while others have a separate call center and switchboard. Make sure the system you are evaluating can perform the necessary tasks. To efficiently handle calls, switchboard operators need to access information instantly, and transfer callers with few keystrokes. If your operators take appointments or perform physician referral requests, you may need a more robust call navigation system that streamlines the question and answer process between callers and operators, ensuring the correct result.

Interfacing to hospital systems

A call center system doesn’t exist as an island in your organization; there are several hospital systems it needs to “talk to.” Obviously, your PBX or VoIP switch is important to consider. Know how the system will interface to your switch, and if it will work with your current software version. As EMR systems become a more vital part of your organization’s workflow, operators need access to patient information and other data, so a Health Level Seven (HL7) interface is another must. Other integrations to consider include paging, alarms and additional communications devices.

What future call center needs could your organization have?

When evaluating call center products, it’s important to think of the big picture and consider a number of things. First, are there other departments within your organization that could benefit by having access to the call center system? Many organizations have “home grown” small call center systems scattered throughout a facility. The call center product should be flexible enough to accommodate your organization’s structure. Second, consider your company’s history, or the possibility of acquiring other healthcare organizations or facilities. The call center system should be flexible enough to work with various telephony and healthcare IT systems in a centralized or decentralized environment. Finally, are there planned projects that will need call center services? Examples of this include implementing a nurse triage or physician referral program. Consider the call center needs of these programs when evaluating systems.

What else does the call center vendor bring to the table?

Thinking long term is a good idea, so look at everything a vendor has to offer over and above your current needs. Add-on products and modules for a call center system are important in an ever-changing healthcare environment. The Joint Commission, HIPAA and HITECH are all important factors in the evaluation process. Common additions to call center systems include enterprise-wide web-based on-call, staff scheduling tools, secure communications, and call recording packages used to maintain historical accuracy and as a training tool. Also, some organizations are adopting a “work from home” operator workforce, so make sure your vendor has products and experience in remote operator environments.

As technology continues to evolve, we see the call center transforming into something used in different and unique places throughout a healthcare organization. Make sure your vendor has the call center platform you need now, and the ability to grow with you in the future.

Matt Everly is the Marketing Director for Amtelco’s 1Call Healthcare Division. Matt has worked at Amtelco for over 20 years and has held numerous positions including southeast regional sales manager, executive suite market development and marketing manager.

Technorati Tags: Hospital,Call center software,switchboard,communications

It’s a Wireless World

Someday, in the not so distant future, school children will read about the history of telecommunications and computing. They will read about how homes once were connected to the phone company, the cable TV company, and even the power company, by separate dedicated wires. They will read about how our offices used to be connected to the corporate PBX and to the local area network by other sets of wires. They will read about how we had to plug in our laptops, tablets, and cell phones overnight to charge their batteries. They will be amazed at how we could function while being tied down like this.

The world of wires is rapidly disappearing. We are breaking free from the wire tethers that keep us in our offices and limit our productivity as we move throughout our days. We are using smartphones, laptops, and tablets to access our applications, e-mails, files and network resources no matter where we are. We can work from home while sitting in our most comfortable easy chairs. We can take notes in meetings without writing them on pads of paper and then typing them into our computers when we get back to our offices. Our stacks and file cabinets full of paper are disappearing.

With the advent of solutions such as AMTELCO’s miSecureMessages interactive smartphone paging solution, we are accessing on-call schedules, updating our statuses, and sending and receiving pages on our smartphones and tablets. When we receive pages, we are able to reply to the person sending the page, letting them know if we are able to respond or if they need to find another resource. What a concept, responding to a page and letting the person know we have received it. No more sitting by a phone and waiting for a return call. Who would have thought it would someday be this easy.

The final step in breaking free from our wires will be the deployment of wireless power. Wireless charging pads already are available for many of our smartphones and tablets. Imagine walking into your office or a hotel room and setting your phone on a charging pad. No more carrying chargers with us and replacing them when they get lost or burn out from overuse. Someday we won’t need to plug our computers, our lighting, and our appliances into wall outlets. Our AC power will be provided wirelessly, just as our voice and network communications are now.

We are in the midst of a major shift in how we live and work. We will have less stress and will be more productive. We will be more responsive and will provide better service to our customers. We just have to embrace the change, break free from all those wires, and enjoy the ride.

(Kevin Beale is director of software research and development for AMTELCO and 1Call)

Technorati Tags: Telephone Answering Service,TAS,NAEO,ATSI,Amtelco,1Call,smartphone,messaging,appointment reminders,communications,wireless

Call Center of the Future

By Kevin Beale

I think it’s human nature to find things to keep ourselves busy. I certainly am no exception to that rule. I always have a million things I need to be doing for work or at home. One of the hardest things to do is to take a step back from our daily regimen to plan for the future.

Occasionally, looking into the future is a good exercise. So here goes.

Predicting the future of a business segment such as call centers is not magic, it is simply a process of paying attention to trends and making calculated guesses on how those trends will continue or change in the future.

One of the constants of our industry is change. We are constantly being pushed by clients to offer enhanced services to meet their unique business objectives. Clients don’t care about the technology utilized to run our call centers as long as they feel we’ll be there when they need us. They’re focused more on the services we provide for them. That’s where each call center has the opportunity to distinguish itself from the competition.

Call scripting

Call centers have always guided agents through call flows. In the past, this was done by reading instructions and forcing our agents to make on-the-fly decisions. The new model for call flow guidance tends more to sophisticated scripting engines. Scripting shifts the burden of making decisions away from the frontline agents and puts it in the hands of supervisors and managers who can work with clients to determine and agree on the optimum call flow. The role of scripting will continue to expand and grow to include scripting of the dispatch process and Web-connectivity to client systems.

Virtualization

Virtual call centers will become more prevalent in the coming years, especially as an element of the consolidation that is taking place in the call center industry. Virtual call centers will be much more flexible than traditional call centers which are constrained by their locations, floor space, and physical agent positions. Virtual call centers will utilize collocated call center solutions and remote agents. Use of a collocated call center solution breaks the call center away from the physical constraints and overhead costs of a building, equipment room, and back-up power. The use of remote agents eliminates physical floor space requirements, heating and cooling, break rooms, agent computers, and, more importantly, allows much more flexible hour-by-hour staffing, greatly minimizing the biggest non-essential expense a call center faces, the overhead of idle labor.

Shared services

Many call centers are forming partnerships with other call centers with the goal of sharing client calls to form one large borderless call center. Sharing client calls can greatly expand the call volume capacity of participating call centers, allowing each call center to market to larger clients with the assurance they will have the capacity to meet the client’s traffic requirements. There are two aspects to client sharing: redirecting or overflowing of calls, which can be accomplished through arrangements with telephone carriers and can be enhanced through use of VoIP-based SIP trunking, and the sharing of client scripts and data. The use of Web scripting and client sharing tools, such as those available with AMTELCO’s Intelligent Series, can assist call centers in implementing this business expansion strategy.

Call forwarding
One-number call forwarding has been gaining popularity for several years. This trend will continue and will pick up steam in the years ahead. The driving factor for this shift is cost savings, both in terms of telephone carrier costs and potential tax savings if proposed surcharges (new taxes) on phone numbers are enacted. One-number call forwarding allows call centers to eliminate the vast majority of DID numbers by keying on the calling number, called number or forwarded number of each call. Call center systems that can read any of these call fields on a client-by-client basis, provide big benefits to their owners.

Disaster planning

Disaster recovery has become a major focus of the call center industry across all vertical markets. This trend will continue. Disaster recovery solutions may be put in place by call centers within their infrastructure to provide redundancy of essential call center components. It may also be implemented by partnering with their vendor on hosted disaster recovery solutions. A recent example of the power of partnering with a call center vendor for disaster recovery is the situation that occurred at a Midwest call center that lost all telephone connectivity for several days when a major cable was cut by a construction crew. The call center worked with its phone carrier to quickly redirect calls to an emergency backup system at AMTELCO’s corporate headquarters in McFarland, Wisconsin. This kept the call center in business during a situation that stretched into days and could have been catastrophic. Every call center should be making such disaster recovery plans.

VoIP technology

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will continue to become more prevalent in the call center industry. The growth of VoIP will benefit call centers looking to expand on their use of remote agents, by providing low-cost audio connectivity that is available virtually anywhere. Over the next few years, we’ll start to see VoIP take hold on the trunking side of the business. Call centers will begin replacing their existing PRI ISDN spans with VoIP-based SIP trunks and will find them to be cost effective and reliable. SIP trunks provide many benefits to call centers, including cost savings, nationwide local numbers, and more flexibility in overflowing calls to partner call centers and rerouting calls for disaster recovery situations.

Soft Switching

There is an emerging trend towards software-based switching in the telecom industry. Software-based switching utilizes a computer’s central processor to manage switching functions rather than CTI board-based processors and DSP resources. One of the challenges of software-based switching has been to match the scalability and reliability of hardware-based switching. This is still a work in progress with open-source PBX’s such as Asterisk leading the way. While we may not see mainstream call centers banking their entire business on soft switching for quite some time, we will see call centers utilizing soft switching for specialized functions and applications. These software-based switching solutions will continue to advance and become more prevalent in the call center industry.

Soft Agents
One soft switch-related opportunity for our industry will be the emergence of switch independent soft agents, such as AMTELCO’s Infinity Soft Agent, that are capable of integrating with any third-party PBX or ACD system. This will give call center owners much more flexibility in selecting their switching platforms and will open up the opportunity to connect directly to client PBX’s and ACD’s.
Change is inevitable and not to be feared. It’s one of the exciting things about the call center industry. We are constantly forced to reshape our businesses to meet ever changing client demands. I guess that’s why we like what we do so much.

(Kevin Beale is director of software research and development for AMTELCO and 1Call)

 

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Pro Show Provides an Easy Way to Remind Patients About Upcoming Appointments and Eliminate “No Shows!”

Healthcare organizations must constantly contend with patients who miss their scheduled appointments without notifying the physician’s office. These “no show” appointments cost thousands of dollars in wasted resources and staff. 1Call’s Pro Show Automated Appointment Reminder application helps healthcare organizations be proactive by reminding patients in advance, saving time, saving money, and increasing staff productivity. Pro Show is available as an on-site or remotely hosted solution.

1Call’s Pro Show can remind patients via home phone, mobile phone, e-mail, and text messages. Pro Show can send reminders instantly when the information is received, or they can be scheduled to be sent 72 hours, 48 hours, 24 hours, or any amount of time prior to the appointments. In addition to reminders for patients, Pro Show can also be used to remind physicians and staff members about upcoming meetings, events, classes, and for virtually any type of notification service needed. Pro Show offers multilingual capabilities, helping healthcare organizations ensure they can use it for even more patients, physicians, and staff members. Since Pro Show is automated, staff members that were assigned to call patients to remind them of their upcoming appointments can now work on other needed tasks in the organization.

Pro Show features built-in flexibility, efficiency and convenience, ensuring that it meets the specific needs of each healthcare organization. The types of notification, and number of attempts can be customized for each recipient. The time of day, and the days of the week that Pro Show can send reminders can also be customized for each recipient, eliminating late night, early morning, weekend and holiday reminders. For children’s appointments, Pro Show adjusts the prompts to be geared towards the patient’s parent or guardian. Pro Show keeps track of the outcomes of each notification attempt, giving healthcare organizations the data needed for accurate reports and statistics.

Healthcare organizations are currently using Pro Show to make thousands of automated appointment reminder calls, text message reminders, and e-mail reminders each month. These organizations have reported a significant reduction of patient no shows. Since patients who miss their appointments typically need to reschedule their appointments, an added benefit of Pro Show in these organizations is a considerable reduction in the number of people being placed on waiting lists.

1Call President Tom Curtin said, “Pro Show helps healthcare organizations keep their waiting rooms full, keeping their employees more productive while also increasing revenue for their organizations. Because of this, using Pro Show keeps both administrators and physicians happy.”

Technorati Tags: appointment reminders,medical appointments,medical appointment reminders,doctor appointment reminders,sms appointment reminders,text message appointment reminders,hospital appointment reminders,physician appointment reminder,automated appointment reminders,automatic appointment reminders

The Future of Paging “miSecureMessages”

For decades our 1Call hospital and healthcare customers have used pagers almost exclusively as a means to alert doctors and nurses for emergency and some non-emergency issues. However, the expanding popularity of smartphones in the medical field is changing the need for pagers in the future.

Paging as a service was in its heyday in the mid 1990s until its popularity peaked in 1999. Since then the paging industry has taken a back seat to mobile two-way technology like mobile phones and more recently, smartphones. iPhone ®, iPad™, BlackBerry ®, and Android™ technology has changed the lives of average people, and now it’s finding its way into the healthcare fields and starting to take hold with physicians. Most physicians are trading in their pagers for smartphones. According to a recent Manhattan Research study, 72 percent of U.S. physicians use smartphones, and the research firm predicts that 81 percent of physicians will use a smartphone by 2012.¹

So with such a high percentage of physicians already carrying smartphones, how do we send pages to smartphones?

 

miSecureMessages is a product developed by AMTELCO/1Call as a pager replacement and two-way encrypted messaging application (app) for smartphones. miSecureMessages is used by 1Call customers in conjunction with their Infinity hospital call center/intelligent PBX console systems, as a stand-alone browser accessible messaging dispatch and monitoring product, or as a device-to-device messaging platform.

To send a message, the user simply selects the miSecureMessages smartphone icon, types the message, and clicks send. The physician receives an instant alert, and can view the secure message, and respond with a preprogrammed response, or their own custom message. The reply is securely sent back to the user. All of this activity is recorded, and can be viewed online real-time.

To find out more about miSecureMessages visit https://misecuremessages.com/

See for yourself how easy it is to send a secure message with miSecureMessages.

 

1. 72 percent of physicians use smartphones, by Brian Dolan, May 5, 2010, http://mobilehealthnews.com/7505/72-percent-of-us-physicians-use-smartphones/.

Matt Everly is the Marketing Director for Amtelco’s 1Call Healthcare Division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Paging,pagers,pager replacement,smartphone,application,app,AMTELCO,1Call,iPhone,iPad,Blackberry

AMTELCO Soft Agent Passes Cisco IVT Certification

AMTELCO Soft Agent Passes Cisco IVT Certification.

1Call Ushers In The Next Generation Of Cloud-Based Scheduling Applications With miOnCall

Recently, we have worked with customers and prospects that manually keep track of oncall scheduling information using binders and spreadsheets to organize all types of schedules. This method works, but I think a few questions need to be asked when taking this approach: 1.) How many people-hours does it take to create and maintain schedules this way? 2.) Is there a more efficient way of creating, maintaining and sharing oncall schedules?

When speaking with healthcare customers and prospects we found out that it IS very time consuming to create and maintain ANY type of schedule. In many instances overnight hospital personnel create and assemble oncall binders with paper schedules, and guess what? As soon as these binders are distributed and starting to be used by  hospital personnel, they are rendered out of date. Changes to these schedules start immediately because of schedule swaps, weather emergencies or ill personnel that can’t cover their assigned schedules. Eventually, the out of date oncall scheduling information leads to errors like contacting the wrong doctor at the wrong time. It’s the nature of the beast when it comes to relying on paper schedules.

I think 1Call has come up with an answer for the second question: Is there a more efficient way of creating, maintaining and sharing oncall schedules? And that answer is Yes!

The answer is miOnCall.

The subscription-based miOnCall application is a powerful, flexible and completely secure cloud-based oncall scheduling application that makes it easy to assign schedule coverage, view schedule coverage, and dispatch messages. The miOnCall schedules are available to physicians and staff via Web access, can be synched with Outlook® calendars, and accessed with AMTELCO’s miOnCall App, available on the Apple® iTunes® store for the iPhone®, iPad™, and iPod touch®. miOnCall is perfect for small and large doctors groups, clinics and large healthcare organizations. Contact 1Call about miOnCall at info@miOnCall.com or visit www.miOnCall.com to subscribe for service.

Matt Everly is the Marketing Director for Amtelco’s 1Call Healthcare Division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Oncall scheduling,web oncall,call scheduling,oncall app,iPhone,Blackberry,on-call,on call

Leveraging the Power of Scripted Call Navigation in a Hospital Call Center

“Easily guiding operators through call processing and data collection”

1Call has hundreds of hospitals using the Infinity call center system to process calls. Many of these users are starting to see the value of using the power of Infinity’s Scripted Call Navigation for intelligent data collection. Similar to using a GPS that guides us to our destination, Infinity Scripted Call Navigation easily guides operators through the entire process of handling each caller’s needs and collecting the data that your organization needs.

Simplified Set Up

Scripted Call Navigation is not only a powerful call processing tool, but it is completely customizable by the user. Starting with the basic scripts that are included, you can add exactly the information they need, such as protocols, detailed up-to-the-minute information, and external database integration that is unique to your healthcare organization. These tools empower you to create scripts on-the-fly or easily modify a script to be more user-friendly for operators and to increase efficiency and reduce errors. The drag-and-drop script elements make it easy for you to master the script creation process and make it as “fancy” as you’d like.

Built-In Scripted Call Navigation Tools

The 1Call Infinity Scripted Call Navigation uses built-in intelligence and one-stop-shop integration tools to give your operators everything they need to process all the types of call they handle during a shift. These tools include:

• Spell checker
• Zip code look-up
• Credit card formatting
• Valid e-mail verification
• On-call and departmental schedules
• Contact methods based on time of day and day of the week
• Free-form palettes
• Web integration
• Data security tools

Easily Create Scripts

In addition to the included scripts, 1Call customers can access a script library, provided by 1Call, to help them easily build the customized navigation scripts they need. Completed scripts can also be uploaded to the library, for use by other 1Call customers.

Uses in a Hospital Call Center

Code calls, physician-to-physician, and patient-to-physician referral are a few of the many examples of call types that are currently using 1Call’s Scripted Call Navigation to streamline call processing, collect pertinent data, eliminate errors, and also keep the customers happy.

When using Scripted Call Navigation, operators only see the information they need to successfully navigate though the particular call they are currently handling. By presenting the proper data to the operators, you reduce the time it would take them to sort though binders, note pads or access external data sources to find exactly what was needed at a particular point during a call. Thus, time is saved, errors are reduced, and operator training time is slashed substantially.

Because of the many benefits, and taking advantage of Web-based Scripted Call Navigation, it’s easy to see how scripts can easily be used – by operators in the call center, online by staff, and even online by patients – to handle needs for other departments in an organization, such as Class Registration, Patient Registration, as a smart forms template and as a general “intelligent” data collection and navigation tool.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Hospital call center,operator services,scripted call navigation,hospital switchboard,code calls,AMTELCO,1Call,physician referral,agent call scripting,call branching,inbound call processing,healthcare

AnswerStat “1Call: Helping Healthcare Organizations Effectively Manage Day-to-Day and Crisis Communications”

October/November 2010

For over 30 years, Amtelco has been providing innovative communication solutions to call centers around the world. In 1997, the 1Call Division was formed to offer enterprise-wide communication solutions designed specifically for healthcare organizations. 1Call is dedicated to serving the unique call center and communication needs of healthcare organizations, helping improve communications for patients, physicians, and staff.

Our Customers Say It Best: “What would I do without the customer care group?” asks Betty Bouchie, senior systems analyst, voice services at Capital Health in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “When I need them, they always come through for me. The system is so flexible, I can easily handle all the day-to-day needs for our facility, but I seem to encounter the most unusual requests, and yet customer care always manages to find a unique solution and offer the best advice to help me find the right solution. Their service is individual, knowledgeable, and professional. Thank you to every lady and gentleman in the group. You deserve a gold star!”

“Voice logger is a great tool; the operators love it,” adds Fedisha Hampton, supervisor, hospital operators and paging services, at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas, Texas. “The operators have always been the ‘dumping grounds’ with no back up or proof of any calls. With voice logger, those are the days of the past. You can send the calls to anyone who has a complaint and once they receive the calls via email, it’s a whole different respect for your staff. Before voice logger, we had to ‘bite the bullet’ and apologize for things we know we did not do. It is also a good tool for the operators because when we go over their calls with them, they can hear tones in their voices that they may not have been aware of at the time of the call. So it makes them even more conscious of how they handle their callers. It is great tracking software. Please invest [in voice logger] and besides you are with the top company, Amtelco, so you won’t go wrong!”

Creating Lasting Partnerships: Every patient deserves the best care possible. 1Call’s goal is to provide healthcare organizations with the tools to efficiently handle caller’s requests with a single phone call, saving time, eliminating confusion, and providing patients with premier service. 1Call systems furnish seamless integrations with existing legacy IT and PBX networks to save costs and bring information together in a single location. 1Call has developed partnerships with Avaya, Cisco, Digium, HL7, and NEC.

Because of the detailed working relationship with customers, 1Call also considers each customer a partner organization. By continuing to meet and exceed their needs, the list of 1Call partners continues to grow throughout the US and Canada at organizations both large and small.

Featuring 5-Star Service and Support: 1Call works closely with each healthcare organization, helping them design a customized system that meets their unique needs. 1Call has a reputation for complete, professional system support, offering training, installation, and technical support staff on-call on a 24-hour basis.

Approximately 70 percent of the customer care group has been with Amtelco for ten or more years. This promotes a comfortable working relationship between customers and the customer care group. 1Call’s 5-star service and support is more than just a slogan; it comes with every 1Call system, and includes:

• An informed customer care group: project management teams work with  customers before, during, and long after they begin using their 1Call equipment.
• Experienced trainers and installers: customers receive detailed training and a smooth installation to help streamline communications for their entire organization. 1Call also offers continuing education opportunities to ensure customers are able to utilize all the system features, including the newest ones.
• Knowledgeable field engineers: customers simply call or e­mail, and the field engineering specialists will assist them with all of their technical questions.
• On-line resource library and tech helper: is available 24/7 for instant answers any time of the day or night; movies covering new features and popular system topics are also available.
• The largest healthcare call center user’s group: the NAEO (National Amtelco Equipment Owners) group gives valuable support and a creative community for sharing ideas.

Innovation in Action: 1Call designs high-performance, reliable software applications that streamline hospital-wide communications. Frequent software releases give customers access to the newest features and technology. 1Call’s solutions fit both small and large healthcare organizations.

The 1Call systems significantly reduce the training time needed for operators, creating a fast ROI. Web-based access also simplifies procedures for operators and staff members. Detailed reporting is included with each 1Call solution, keeping the call center informed. Other 1Call features include:

• Scripted call processing solutions: Simplify call handling, speed training, and eliminate errors with customized scripts. Supervisors can easily edit existing scripts or create new scripts at any time. Script libraries are also available for customers to download and/or upload scripts that handle a wide variety of call types. The “code call” process is just one of the many scripts that help operators and personnel handle codes hospital-wide.
• Notification solutions: Quickly getting personnel to the correct location is vital. The 1Call notification solutions are ideal for day-to-day communications, featuring automated and secure SMS, email, and paging for HL7 integrations, helping personnel provide better patient care, as well as for emergency communications, getting personnel to the correct location faster. The 1Call notification solutions also help customers be proactive and provide better service by reminding patients about upcoming appointments.
• Scheduling solutions: 1Call features automated workforce scheduling, allowing complex schedules for entire departments to be quickly created. The 1Call on-call schedules allow physicians and staff members to view, enter, and edit their own on-call schedules. The automated schedules ensure that operators always contact the correct on-call person.
• IVR and speech solutions: Save time for internal and external callers by automating routine phone calls and provide even better service for patients with IVR and speech solutions. The speech solutions also create multi-party conference calls and automatically record incoming calls, outgoing calls, and screen captures, helping users maintain accurate records and speeding operator training.
• Secure mobile and desktop solutions: 1Call features a complete collection of enterprise-wide and mobile applications to improve hospital-wide communications, including secure iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and other secure smartphone apps. For more convenience, 1Call also features a number of communication solutions that are available directly on the physician’s and staff member’s desktops.

Early History: 1Call has a strong history in the telemessaging industry. Amtelco, the parent company of 1Call, was founded in 1976 to provide communication solutions to the answering service and medical messaging industry. Bill Curtin, the founder of Amtelco, received his first telecommunications patent in 1951. Since that time, Amtelco’s innovation has added 30 patents.

Amtelco Today: Under the leadership of Chairwoman of the Board Eleanor Curtin and President Tom Curtin, Amtelco’s main office in Wisconsin houses personnel in solutions development, customer care, field engineering, manufacturing, and administrative staff. Amtelco also has 12 sales offices and six customer care offices throughout the U.S. and Canada.

A Bright Future: 1Call is dedicated to continuing to provide healthcare organizations with the solutions needed to offer more services while containing costs. By working closely with customers, 1Call will continue to develop innovative features and products.

For more information, call 800-225-6035, email info@1call.com, or visit http://www.1call.com.