VoIP for HealthCare: 5 Reasons Why It’s Important
Organizations all over the world have excitedly jumped on board the VoIP train. Various benefits that VoIP provides have made it an integral part of communication between the organization and its clients. While the more tech-savvy industries have fully integrated into the VoIP channel, many traditional industries are still wary.
However, the advantages of VoIP are speaking for themselves and are slowly convincing even the unbelievers that the old school phones are now no longer capable of handling the increasing workload.
One of the fields in which VoIP still isn’t appreciated as much as it should be is healthcare industry. From big hospitals to small clinics and other healthcare offices, VoIP is able to bring a new level of efficiency and connectivity that the traditional phone services just cannot.
Following are the chief benefits that VoIP brings to the table for healthcare industries:
1. Cost Reduction
The biggest selling factor of VoIP is that it is affordable and this is pretty essential for healthcare industry, which has always faced the financial challenges. It can help a healthcare institution in cutting down the telephony costs by a huge margin. These funds can be proportioned off to other needed services that would directly help in saving lives.
VoIP enables low cost calling for both, in-house or external. The plans too are highly flexible with customizable services that can be chosen depending on the needs and the number of extensions that need to be connected. As the staff at healthcare institution grows, the VoIP plan can grow with it as well.
2. Improved Medical Consultation
The internet has made the world a much smaller place. This has also helped in a much better landscape for healthcare as the services or expertise of professionals physically far way can be utilized in order to help sick individuals.
With the help of cloud, VoIP has provided instant long distance communication between specialists from all over the world. Both voice and video conferencing can help these specialists discuss with each other so that the best health care can be provided.
3. Ease of Communication
One of the most engaging parts of any healthcare institution is the registration and billing of the services provided to the patients. It is a taxing process for both the hospital staff as well as the patients. In times of emergencies, getting stuck in the registration process is very frustrating, especially so for the patients.
VoIP can help in managing multiple calls, collecting payments, patient identification and a lot more small activities that when combined forms a major part of the interaction between the patient and the professionals. Since VoIP facilitates fax into emails, documents such as- Payment information, registration forms, etc., can be directly sent to the patient’s inbox to maintain a smoother experience for both parties.
4. Maintain Priorities
Hospitals get a lot of calls. While most of them are emergencies, a significant amount deals with basic inquiries. This often leads to congestion and a patient calling for an ambulance may be kept on hold because some other guy is on the phone with the hospital staff just to inquire on the rates of a simple health check-up.
VoIP can help in prioritizing calls with the CRM, deciding the importance of the calls based on automated questions. At the same time, implementing the IVR can automate the emergency response. This makes the call receiving process much more efficient as emergency calls are given priority over routine inquiries.
5. Endless Operations
The one thing hospitals can never have is downtime. Many new technologies require a complete overhaul of the existing infrastructure that leads to a substantial downtime. However, this is not the case with VoIP.
It installs over the existing computer network, eliminating the chances of any downtime. Being cloud based, most of the equipment needed are already in place, thus no disruptive installations are needed. This enables healthcare institutions to increase their effectiveness without any hindrances in the current services even for a short time.
Wrapping it up
Healthcare is an important necessity of our lives. Hence, it needs to be equipped with the best in technology to ensure that the best services are being provided. VoIP can be a major help in increasing both the efficiency and the simplicity of patient interaction with the health care institutions.