ASC’s solutions help to save up to three hours per week in lost administration time

Hoesbach/Germany, August 1, 2011 – ASC (www.asctelecom.com), a leading global provider of innovative solutions to record, analyze and evaluate multimedia-based communications, implemented its MARATHON EVOLUTION communications recording solution into Medway On Call Care’s (MedOCC) busy healthcare environment to ensure consistency and quality of service.

MedOCC, an urgent care service provided by Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) in Southeast England, provides 24/7 GP support for 280,000 service users in the Medway area. MCH is keen to ensure that money is spent in the best possible way, creating real improvements in people’s health and healthcare within the Medway community. MedOCC handles calls from the public at two separate locations at Quayside House and Medway Maritime Hospital.

MedOCC installed ASC’s MARATHON EVOLUTION recorder at Quayside House and MARATHON EVOlite at their base at Medway Maritime Hospital. ASC recorders were integrated to Nortel digital handsets and Adastra’s patient management system. ASC’s solutions helped to save up to three hours per week in lost administration time, previously spent retrieving calls from their old recording system.

MedOCC reports that ASC`s communications recording helps to facilitate QR (quality requirement) audits, ensuring clinical assessments are completed effectively and improving training and coaching of non-clinical staff.

Karen Morgan, Head of Unscheduled Care at MCH, said: “ASC’s communications recorder exceeded all our expectations. It has simplified and saved time in searching for calls, increasing protection for our patients and staff alike. We were particularly impressed by how user-friendly and flexible the solution is. We can now access calls directly through the patient’s record using the Adastra software or independently via WEBplay and browser. This capability has saved us up to three hours in lost administration time per week.”

MedOCC desperately needed a call recording solution to improve its operational efficiency. The fundamental importance was the need to record all ‘out of hours’ clinical assessments made by GPs for mandatory QR (Quality Requirement) audits and additionally, for training and coaching of non clinical staff, in the correct procedure for call handling.

Regular audits are required to ensure non-clinical staff followed best practices and were able to identify “red flags” indicating when a patient required additional clinical support. At MedOCC calls are recorded for both patient and staff protection and dispute avoidance. At particularly busy periods, the ‘out of hours’ service can take up to 500 calls per day in an average weekend. Calls can often be challenging, both in terms of call volumes and the customer interaction itself. Patients can be anxious and sometimes demanding and may complain, if not fully satisfied. Service expectations are high and given the volume of calls received, there are often queries and concerns, which require archived calls to be retrieved and assessed. Staffing levels vary according to peak periods typically up to eight advisors receive calls on a weekday shift, six advisors at an evening shift and up to twenty four advisors during the weekend. Given the constraints of using the old call recording system, it was taking up to three hours per week in administration time, to retrieve calls for QR audits and training purposes.

Please read the entire case study at
www.asctelecom.com/brochures/en/CS_Medway_MedOCC_UK.pdf