Imagine a busy hospital where unanswered calls lead to missed appointments and critical lab results get stuck between departments. Such scenarios can compromise patient safety and satisfaction, creating a stressful environment for healthcare professionals.
The healthcare industry requires clear and efficient communication. From booking appointments to receiving critical medical advice, timely and accessible healthcare communication tools and channels are essential for both patients and providers.
As the demand for more streamlined healthcare communication grows, the limitations of traditional phone systems become more apparent, affecting patient satisfaction and operational effectiveness.
Cloud telephony has varied solutions to bridge these healthcare communication gaps. Its secure and scalable platform can transform communication within your institution. This translates to streamlined workflows, facilitated information sharing between departments, and ensuring calls reach the right person. Ultimately, this improves healthcare accessibility for patients and enhances overall care delivery.
Challenges of Medical Phone Systems
Here are some of the reasons why traditional phone systems fall short of providing effective communication.
- Traditional phone systems lack integration with electronic health records (EHRs) and other digital platforms, which creates information silos. This may cause delays in patient care and hinder interprofessional collaboration.
- These phone systems have limited scalability. Therefore they struggle to handle fluctuating call volume and adding new features, phone lines, or users.
- Traditional systems also lack advanced telehealth capabilities. Audio call conversations don’t have the visual cues and detailed information exchange that video consultations offer.
- Traditional and legacy systems can prove more expensive than VoIP alternatives. Research shows companies can reduce costs by 87% when switching to a cloud phone solution.
What Role Can Cloud Telephony Play?
Cloud telephony leverages the internet to make and receive phone calls. Instead of relying on traditional phone lines, this technology transmits voice data as packets over the internet using voice over internet protocol (VoIP).
VoIP in healthcare allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and advanced features compared to traditional systems.
6 Ways to Increase Healthcare Coverage and Accessibility with Cloud Telephony
Besides facilitating telehealth services, cloud telephony has offered innovative solutions to overcome traditional communication barriers in patient care.
Let’s take a look at six ways in which you can leverage cloud communication for healthcare telephony:
- Extend global reach with virtual phone numbers
- Streamline communication for distributed healthcare teams
- Organize call flows with IVR
- Track calls to improve caller experiences
- Enhance privacy for professionals with caller ID management
- Ensure service continuity with failover options
1. Extend Global Reach with Virtual Numbers
Cloud telephony provides extended global coverage for target regions through virtual numbers. You can get toll-free numbers or local numbers for your business from different regions. And for hard-to-reach and remote regions, some providers offer other bespoke solutions to enable accessibility.
Patients from these regions requiring specialists can reach your organization for free or with local standard rates. This expands access to specialized care and breaks down geographical barriers for patients in remote areas.
Global Call Forwarding can set you up with international phone numbers from more than 160 countries around the world. Check out our global coverage to see if we cover your target regions!
2. Streamline Communication for Distributed Healthcare Teams
If your clinics, teams, or specialists are dispersed globally, you can connect through a centralized communication platform. With cloud telephony features like international call forwarding and advanced routing, you can automate call management, sending calls to the most appropriate location automatically.
Or, acquire multiple international numbers and have the calls pass through one phone service to the right location. For example, one of our healthcare clients Healthy Stuff needed a phone system that covers their sales and support teams across Australia, Ireland, and US and sends incoming calls to their teams in the UK.
With international phone numbers and routing, you don’t need a manual operator managing incoming calls. You simply set everything up beforehand and let the system work for you.
3. Organize Call Flows with IVR
Cloud telephony empowers healthcare providers to manage call flows strategically, fostering both efficiency and patient trust. An interactive voice response system (IVR) routes calls based on voice or touch-tone inputs from callers. You can plan for different call flows and customer queries beforehand and feedback them into your healthcare IVR.
For instance, the IVR can greet callers and present clear options—‘1’ for scheduling appointments, ‘2’ for prescription refills, etc. Based on the input, the IVR system can route the call to an agent or voicemail or the appropriate destination accordingly.
This automated telephony system can significantly improve patient satisfaction by reducing wait times, improving accessibility, and empowering callers with self-service options.
4. Track Calls to Improve Caller Experiences
Every call holds valuable information. Track trends in call volume, wait times, and reasons for calls using call records and analytics. By analyzing this data, healthcare institutions can identify areas for improvement like appointment scheduling bottlenecks.
Say there’s a spike in calls for appointments during lunch when lines are busy. Features like time of day routing can be implemented during these times, and incoming calls can be redirected to another available team. In this manner, you can reduce wait times and deliver better customer experience.
Moreover, dedicated hotline numbers for emergencies and non-emergencies ensure patients receive the appropriate level of care promptly. Then, when calls come in, your teams can identify the type of call and know how to respond. This targeted approach prioritizes urgent situations while also addressing non-critical needs through self-service IVR options.
Also, call tracking data can help in allocating resources effectively based on call types. For example, if a high number of calls are related to pediatrics, more staff or dedicated lines can be channeled for pediatric inquiries.
Marketing and advertising campaigns benefit greatly from call tracking data. By using multiple numbers for different marketing channels such as flyers, social media, and websites, you can track call volume and determine which channels generate the most calls. This allows businesses to make targeted and efficient marketing spends.
5. Enhance Privacy for Professionals with Caller ID Management
Caller ID management is a valuable feature that empowers healthcare organizations to protect their professionals’ privacy during private patient consultations. Adjust your caller ID to display the healthcare organization’s number instead of a professional’s personal number, especially during telehealth visits.
This way, patients don’t have access to professionals’ personal contact information and vice versa, maintaining clear boundaries and avoiding unwanted calls outside of work hours.
6. Ensure Service Continuity
Cloud telephony platforms and features are built for resilience. And both provider and customer redundancy mechanisms are crucial for a reliable communication system.
With phone calls being the preferred communication channel, VoIP providers must maintain robust backups and redundancy options to ensure their network and servers are always operational. Make sure to check their network distribution to understand how they protect their systems and servers.
They should also provide features like failover forwarding and redundant routing that help keep communication active in the event of technical glitches or internet outages. When you set these features up, they automatically route calls to alternative numbers or backup systems, if the primary communication system fails.
Another way to maintain continuous service is to use a responsive provider. For instance, another healthcare client Novartis was experiencing service-related issues and outages with their local provider. They needed a responsive cloud telephony provider so they could continue to communicate with customers without any downtime.
As a healthcare provider, you must safeguard patient access to communication channels and professionals even in unprecedented scenarios. This reliability can make your business a dependable source of healthcare support in times of crisis.
How Can Global Call Forwarding Help?
A robust communication system is absolutely vital for any healthcare setup. Using a combination of solutions like call forwarding, IVR, voicemail, call recording, etc., you can meet unique communication demands of your organization.
Global Call Forwarding has been helping healthcare institutions worldwide with a suite of communication tools to build advanced business phone systems.
Talk to our experts and find out how you increase healthcare accessibility with cloud telephone!
