Geisinger Health System Transforms Patient Care

Geisinger Health System, which serves 2.5 million people in its network of hospitals and physicians across 20,000 square miles, is tapping the power of Nortel IP Contact Center solutions to deliver time-saving services for both practitioners and patients. The solutions are part of Nortel's clinical grade Healthcare Solutions

By improving its call center communications, Geisinger has created a single virtual contact center spanning wide geographical areas, allowing calls that were once manually routed by operators at various locations to now be automatically routed to the most appropriate agent. Geisinger's new contact center capabilities also include immediate routing of calls to doctors IP wireless phone, regardless of their location.

"We handle more than 9,000 calls a day across various call centers that staff 400 agents to perform various tasks," said Gary Keefer, director of voice systems for Geisinger Health System. "With each of those calls averaging 2.5 minutes, it became obvious that we needed a solution that would enhance collaboration between the call center and doctors while making it faster for patients to get answers to their questions."

Previously, multiple call centers were fielding calls such as scheduling and confirming patient appointments, calls from referring physicians, or handling IT inquiries. Now, skill-based routing directs calls to the appropriate specialty such as orthopedics or obstetrics, to a general appointment queue, or to wherever client assistance can be best provided. Also, Geisinger is starting to utilize Nortel IP wireless phones to allow physicians and administrators to work collaboratively with the contact center and the patient, regardless of location, quickly answering complex questions and improving first call resolution.

"The flexibility that IP has brought to Geisinger is hard to express in dollars and cents," Keefer said. "We can quickly and easily install IP phones where they are needed. Having that convenience to save a doctor even 10 seconds could be worth a great deal to Geisinger and its patients."

With the introduction of Nortel's Contact Center using Expert Anywhere solution that also includes Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5100, Nortel IP Phones, and Media Processing Server (MPS) 500, Geisinger has transformed multiple call centers into a single virtual contact center with Interactive Voice Response (IVR). Nortel's IVR technology empowers patients to manage their own service. Callers can listen to instructions on pre- and post- surgery care, answer quick health surveys and still be assured that answers which fall out of the "normal" range will alert a nurse to provide additional care or consultation.

"Nortel's Multimedia solutions for healthcare are bringing practitioners and patients together faster and much more effectively," said Dave Murashige, general manager, Multimedia Applications, Nortel. "Geisinger has extended its reach and optimized resources by creating a virtual contact center that has improved communication between staff, doctors and patients. But most importantly, it has made accessing care simpler for thousands of people who need immediate attention."

Through previous deployment of products and solutions from Nortel's award-winning Self-Service Solutions portfolio, as well as products from the Nortel IP Telephony portfolio, Geisinger had a foundation of Nortel technology and was able to expand its capabilities without adding additional hardware. Nortel's Communication Server 1000 was selected because hardware could be kept at the main site, which simplified maintenance to that one location - Nortel.