The phone’s on, but nobody’s home: communications upgrade

Phone menus were changed to allow routine refill requests to be recorded, and greater emphasis was placed on having inbound calls sent to the primary office secretary. The new phone system addresses many of these issues: it has the ability to allow staff to answer multiple lines from any location in the department which created more flexibility in staffing; it allows for calls to be routed appropriately, for example, so that chart requests go directly to Health Information Management and billing questions go directly to Patient Accounts; and it has robust data reporting and management tools that help supervisors make near-real-time decisions. Although a number of problems with the legacy phone system were identified, highlighting the need for a new system, it appears that more could have been done to appreciate the needs and preferences of users with respect to phone call management.