Mental Health Clinic Finds Old Phone Systems Hamper Care

In these days of physicians staying in touch with their offices on their smartphones, some hospitals are still using outdated and disparate phone systems to talk to each other.

According to a story at insurancenewsnet.com, a clinic that offers psychological services in Bloomfield, Mich., was finding its ability for staff, counselors and patients to communicate extremely hampered by old and unrelated phone systems.

No medical office would benefit from this disconnect. But calls from patients needing counseling are extremely important and in the clinic, according to the story, they "sometimes went unanswered when call volume was too high or phones were left unattended at remote sites with limited staff." Even those in the office had trouble communicating with each other, at times. "Staff needed to dial an outside line and the full phone number, making quick consults cumbersome, and making it impossible to transfer an outside call from one clinic to another," according to the story.

Perhaps just as important, the phone system was affecting the bottom line. The continual interaction between offices resulted in high phone bills each month. Staff resources were also being allocated inappropriately. Instead of focusing on patient care, we had staff at each location doing billing, insurance processing and other administrative tasks.

"The existing system simply was not answering our needs. We had to improve responsiveness to patient calls and increase collaboration among counselors," said Oakland Psychological Clinic founder Barry Tigay , M. D. in the insurancenewsnet.com story.

"We have identified a need for marrying the corporate phone systems in healthcare that nurses typically use, with the smartphone platforms used by physicians for more efficient communication," said Todd Plesko, CEO of a company which provides these kinds of services.

The Oakland Psychological Clinic provides a full range of mental health and chemical-dependency services to children, adolescents, adults, families and organizations, according to the story. It has recently seen an increase in patients and a cut in state funding ("over the past two years, states have cut a combined $1.8 billion from the public mental health system, according to a recent report by the National Alliance for Mental Illness, an advocacy group that tracks mental health spending in all 50 states," according to the story).

So the clinic decided a single-network solution was the answer.

Using Telcom Corp, a local telecommunications company, a modern, voice-overInternet protocol (VoIP)-enabled system was installed at the clinic's locations. Now all Oakland Psychological Clinic offices can have calls directed from any site to a central location, allowing the clinic to centralize inbound calls, including before and after normal business hours, to one single location with a dedicated receptionist, simplifying billing and insurance processing, according to the story.

Other physicians are choosing different methods to stay in touch. One is a service, PhoneMyDoctor, that allows a patient to be put through a series of prompts that records necessary information, such as the nature of the health problem, according to heathcareitnews.com. The physician then receives a text from PhoneMyDoctor, notifying the doctor of the call, and then he or she calls into PhoneMyDoctor with an 800 number specific to his or her practice.

Even better, on the same call, the physician can listen to the patient's actual recorded complaint and "either call him back, place a prescription with the patient’s pharmacy, or dial into his or her office to leave detailed follow-up instructions for treatment, to be acted upon the next day," according to the story.

"Maximizing the productivity of our staff was essential in today's environment of stretched resources," says Oakland Clinic's Tigay. "Any tools we can utilize to make everyday business tasks easier is a win for us and lets the entire organization focus on what's really important - helping our communities fight chemical dependency."

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