Company leverages NEC’s UNIVERGE®360 approach to help ensure effective communications and reduce phone bills by 20 percent
IRVING, TX, January 28, 2009 — NEC Unified Solutions, Inc. (NEC), a leader in enterprise business communications, today announced that Colon & Rectal Center of Arizona (CRCA) is utilizing its UNIVERGE® SV8100 communications server, auto-call distribution (ACD), and UM8000 unified messaging solution to help the center lower costs and thrive with a collaborative environment that allows enhanced patient care. The CRCA is also using NEC’s NetLink to seamlessly integrate its two sites and enable centralized reservations with ACD.
The CRCA faced a number of communications challenges prior to selecting the NEC IP communications solution: incompatible telephone systems that did not allow interoffice call transfers, separate office appointment-setting functions, lost calls and extended hold-times for patients. NEC UNIVERGE solutions exclusive dealer, Canyon Telecom, addressed these challenges and designed, implemented and managed the project to make communications at CRCA more efficient.
“Regardless of where anyone is, on any given day, the NEC solution provided by Canyon Telecom is completely seamless and helps everyone communicate effectively in order to allow us to give our patients the best care possible,” said Dr. Elizabeth McConnell, founder, CRCA. “The solution has cut our phone bills by 20 percent, enabled us to operate with one less appointment clerk and we believe has become a tremendous asset to our practice.”
The solution yields easy transfer of outside calls between offices and now employees can reach each other with four-digit dialing, regardless of where they are located. ACD reduces caller hold times and distributes call volumes evenly among the office clerks. Additionally, ACD provides call handling metrics that allow CRCA to improve office management as well as identify training issues thereby enabling them to more effectively control the appointment-setting function of the practice.
The solution uses two UNIVERGE SV8100 communications servers, one in each of the practice’s two locations, connected via NetLink, a powerful networking application. Since the SV8100s share a single database, they operate as a single seamless solution. The two connected servers answer five different telephone numbers and provide IP telephony for CRCA’s two office locations, which include three physician’s practices and a surgical center. An auto-attendant on the SV8100 answers the phone for all three doctors; each is able to have a unique night mode and on-off schedule.
“Enhanced delivery and patient scheduling is necessary in the competitive environment of healthcare and this solution will continue to help unify CRCA’s communications as the practice continues to grow and evolve,” said Larry Levenberg, vice president and general manager, National Channel, NEC Unified Solutions. “CRCA’s needs aligned perfectly with our UNIVERGE360 framework in which the role of individual employees determines the best communications method and technology.”
