Edmonton Medical Centre provide healthcare services to nearly 4,000 patients in Edmonton, London. Additionally, the practice hosts Pharmacists onsite for their own patients and also other local practices, providing them with necessary communications.

The Challenge

Capacity was the primary issue for Edmonton Medical Centre. As Practice Manager, Stuart Abrahams, explains, their legacy system only provided “two lines, one coming in, one coming out and it wasn’t ideal. Medics were using their mobile to call out – one to one to France and things like that, it just didn’t work.”

Call Recording was also a high priority so the practice could track conversations with patients, providing staff protection against erroneous claims.

Prior to engaging with Surgery Connect, Stuart contracted BT to supply a cloud based system and “it was awful. They sent hubs, all these boxes came with hubs and they said ‘Oh, you have to connect it yourself.’ So I think we spent two weekends crawling around, wiring things in to each room. Eventually it still wasn’t working, so I phoned the helpline and asked ‘Well how do we get it going and then how do we transfer a call’, and they said ‘Oh no, that [system] is not suitable for a surgery!'”

The Solution

Edmonton Medical Centre weren’t looking to revolutionise their communications. They “were looking for what we had before, because it worked, but on a much bigger scale. Just more lines, call recording, to be able to control when we are full up for appointments, and ease of use. We still use reception to deal with everything and to transfer calls.” Surgery Connect includes unlimited capacity and call recording, and given it’s simple to use practices can ‘hit the ground running’. For those who want extensive control, options and reporting, Surgery Connect is also the ideal Healthcare Communications solution.

Messaging

In-queue messaging is useful in informing patients before they reach reception. As Stuart explains this helps reduce staff “repeating the same thing a number of times a day.” Also “prerecorded messages cut down the calls. Once I’ve moved the message over to say there’s no more appointments this afternoon, it goes quieter. They’ve already got the message.”

The staff find the system “really easy to use”, with the OOH facility further streamlining communications as they “don’t need answerphones anymore, it’s based on time. So at 6:30, it just goes over.”

Call Recording

Call Recording has proven to be useful both from a staff protection perspective and also training. A recent example came from a patient calling to ask about her medication dosage. When reception explained they’d need to check with the relevant Doctor, who was unavailable, the patient replied with “Well I want to know now.” And when reception indicated they couldn’t assist immediately the patient countered with “Well, I’ll just take what I think, then I’ll say that you said it.” Clearly, this is unacceptable behaviour, but staff are protected by the call recording, and with review assisting in formulating responses to patient threats.

Support

Support is also appreciated by Stuart, along with access to a Customer Relationship Manager: “the ease of contact with the CRM and the help line.” Stuart also commended the X-on staff because they are “easy to deal with and pleasant and very helpful. Everyone I spoke to there was very helpful, every single person, from the trainers to everyone.”

“We’ve got a WhatsApp group, the Practice Managers, and the systems where they were saying ‘it was good’ were nearly always yourselves.

“Call Recording is a really good function to have.

“We have had no problems with it at all. It works really well.

“I’m very, very happy. There’s no fault. I know it sounds sickly sweet, but I can’t see a fault!”

Stuart Abrahams, Practice Manager, Edmonton Medical Centre