The Background
Southgate Medical Group, based in Crawley, West Sussex, was established over 60 years ago.
The shared vision of the practice’s 30 members of staff is to provide out-of-hospital integrated care to its 9,000 patients when they require it. The practice has a long commitment to disease prevention and the promotion of good health.
The Medical Group has recently moved to new premises and has acquired more patients as a result.
The Challenge
Southgate Medical Group had a basic telephone system in place but following the increase in patients, the system was overburdened. As a result, callers were often met with the engaged tone when phoning to book an appointment.
The surgery sought a new solution with more functionality to improve access for patients and ease the admin burden on staff.
The Solution
Daisy assessed the surgery’s previous issues and identified an opportunity to increase the practice’s call capacity, by developing the existing system using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking.
SIP is a form of hosted VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) which uses the internet to transmit voice data. SIP trunks are used to add data lines to a business’ existing, standard telephone system, making it internet-enabled and allowing new connections to be added in the future, should staff numbers increase.
As part of the SIP installation, Daisy switched the practice to specialist Avaya handsets to provide added functionality, such as the ability to add a greeting message, caller options and facilitate the redirection of calls.
The SIP solution is supported by the online portal ‘My Inbound’, which allows the surgery to access live statistics thereby having full visibility over the system and enabling staff to manage time and resources in order to deal more effectively with call traffic. In addition to this, Daisy also deployed six Bluetooth-enabled mobiles – with unlimited calls and texts – to leverage remote working for certain members of staff, such as GPs who are often required to make home visits or be on call.
The Result
As a result of upgrading its telephony with Daisy, Southgate Medical Group has been able to directly influence patient satisfaction and communication.
Nicky Shearwood, Practice Manager at Southgate Medical Group, said: “We had heard of Daisy and understood that they had a very good reputation, specifically in the health sector. We chose Daisy based on this reputation and also because of the support and dedication our account management team could provide us with.
“The new telephone system has brought huge benefits to our surgery, especially for patients. The ‘My Inbound’ solution means that we can now manage incoming calls with ease, meaning patients have decreased waiting times and very rarely hear the engaged tone.
“Secondary to this, we can also manage staff productivity and efficiency a lot better. We can contact GPs while they are on the move, and they can update us if they are running behind on a home visit so that we can make adjustments to appointments or allocate more staff.
“We are really happy with the solution and the 24/7 maintenance of our telephone lines has been a real added benefit.”
