Don’t compromise. Improve patient care while cutting costs with unified communications.

It’s all about patients. The nature of health care as an industry is changing. Health problems that required a lengthy stay in a hospital a decade ago may now be simple outpatient procedures. Health care networks, rather than single providers, are delivering new and diverse services to patients. The population is aging, and increasingly, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Not that long ago, health care organizations were entirely dependent on paper records that made it difficult and costly to quickly assess patients. Health care providers have made significant investments in information technology, but one thing remains the same: patient care has always been at the center of concern in health care. Today, health care organizations are investing in everything from electronic patient records to electronic supply management, with a focus on improving patient care while cutting costs. A single patient may see several physicians or other practitioners from different health care organizations. Several record sets may need to be integrated and exchanged, and any errors could make the difference between life and death.

Health care organizations face a number of communications challenges.

Patient privacy. Patient confidentiality is an important part of all health care business processes. In fact, patient confidentiality is mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). However, the growing diversity of ways to communicate is making confidentiality harder to maintain. E-mails and voice mails are forwarded. Faxes are lost, misdirected, or intercepted. Each puts patient privacy at risk.

Escalating costs. A large hospital may have several hundred IT applications coordinating patient care. Each application needs to be managed and integrated effectively to ensure staff can use them effectively to provide the best patient care. Traditional phone systems are difficult and costly to integrate with other data systems. Multiple technologies and systems mean high costs to ensure that the systems work together effectively.

Multiple sources of patient information. Nurses, doctors, labs technicians, administrative staff and insurance companies all have to communicate effectively to ensure the health and safety of their patients. But many health care organizations are still dependent on separate systems for fax, voice mail and e-mail, as well as information in paper records and databases. Multiple communications tools require staff to manage several sources of information: voice mails, e-mails, databases and paper filing systems for faxes. Each adds time and complexity to the decision-making process.

Lower productivity. Like many service industries, health care organizations have had difficulty keeping up with changes in the way people exchange information. Phone tag with patients and co-workers, overflowing e-mail inboxes, different work schedules in the lab across the globe or across the street, all impede direct, useful communication. Whether it’s fax, voice mail or e-mail messages, current patient data must be available and it must be available quickly.

Objectworld UC Server can help health care organizations meet these challenges.

Health care providers need flexible communications systems that enable them to maintain single and secure record sets for each patient, and that enable staff and practitioners to make quick and informed decisions. A phone system should make it easy to communicate for everyone involved in a given patient’s care. And it should allow health care organizations to provide information to patients, practitioners and staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With Objectworld, powerful but simple collaboration tools make it easy to improve patient care while cutting costs.

Faster medical decisions with Unified Messaging. Whether it’s fax, voice mail or e-mail messages, patient information is easily available, all from the same place. Staff and practitioners access faxes, voice mails and e-mails directly in Microsoft® Outlook® or Lotus® Notes®, and prioritize and group these messages to best suit patients’ needs. Administrative staff also save time by forwarding voice and fax messages through e-mail to co-workers.

Better patient care with Unified Communications. Using advanced but simple call-routing, practitioners and administrative staff can route calls with a few mouse-clicks to make sure practitioners get patients’ messages and calls wherever they are whenever they need them. Keep and access patient information over the phone with Objectworld’s Interactive Voice Response tools.

Eliminate and reduce redundant costs. With Objectworld, health care organizations can eliminate or reduce redundant paging services and fax machines while improving the flow of communications between practitioner and patient. Health care organizations can further maximize the investment they’ve already made in their phone systems by deploying Objectworld UC Server Standard Edition™ with their existing PBX or cut long distances charges with Objectworld UC Server™’s VoIP. Both products allow organizations to keep costs to a minimum while making communications easier.

Improved privacy and security. With Objectworld, your IT staff manages a single set of policies for security and access. Staff can manage patient records from a single point — the desktop. Separate systems for voice mail and fax are unnecessary. Improve patient privacy and security by directing faxes, voice mails and e-mails to secure staff e-mail inboxes, lessening the chance of jeopardizing patient confidentiality.

Improved patient care with Interactive Voice Reponse. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is already a key part of many health care organizations. But IVR can do more than simply provide employee directories and direct calls. IVR can automate patient evaluations, fax patient records securely and provide information to patients whenever, and wherever they are. With Objectworld’s IVR capabilities, staff and practitioners spend more time providing direct patient care.

Extend your phone system with Objectworld UC Server Standard Edition or transition to VoIP with Objectworld UC Server SIP Edition. Objectworld UC Server provides unified messaging, unified communications, notification, voice conferencing, fax capabilities and more. Whether you want to extend your investment in your existing PBX or lower costs by moving to VoIP, Objectworld UC Server can help your business meet its challenges. With Objectworld UC Server, health care organizations can easily integrate multiple branch offices or medical campuses within a single, flexible and simple phone system. Objectworld UC Server provides the productivity and administration tools that businesses need to manage the system directly from anywhere in the system.

Protect your investment. Every day, computers are becoming faster and cheaper, and people around the globe are imagining new ways to communicate. Objectworld’s open, software-based approach means that as computers become faster and less expensive, your health care organization will benefit directly in cost-savings. With Objectworld’s certified and supported Connect Partners, health care organizations can buy and upgrade third-party hardware and applications, like phones, media gateways, and video conferencing hardware and software, as they need to. Objectworld products provide flexible, secure and cost-effective integration with other phone systems.