Imagine you are in the 1990s and have severe stomach pain. Your parents take you straight to a doctor who diagnosed your condition and gave medicines. Those were no rush hours and the process was easy going.

Today, a fast-growing world, with time valued at no less than gold. Will you be comfortable in waiting long hours to meet a doctor? No, Right!

Now the question is, If you’re a major part of the medical services industry, how about we pause for a minute to analyze the current state of your business.

Whether you are a healthcare provider, a diagnostic center, or a pharmacy, you can benefit tremendously from cloud telephony.

What is Cloud Telephony?

As the name proposes, Cloud Telephony is the communications technology where all communication devices and applications are hosted at the service provider’s premises. Cloud telephony, also known as cloud calling, is a type of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) that offers voice communication services through a third-party host. UCaaS replaces the need for conventional enterprise telephone systems, such as private branch exchange (PBX). Cloud telephony services can be web- or applications-based.

Cloud communication administrations empower clients to make from any PC or cell phone using a web or application. With cloud telephony, you don’t have to bear the cost of heavy communication equipment and on-premise servers.

The communication challenges for healthcare stakeholders:

1. Hospitals:

• Following client discussion:
  Most inbound inquiries tend to get missed in hospitals because the front desk receptionist doesn’t have proper integrated tools and strategies to follow up with patients.
• Checking client experience:
  Due to the absence of follow-ups and automated feedback systems, hospitals miss important inputs from patients. Feedbacks can help medical care institutions to enhance patient experience and improve their services.
• Keeping Patients Record:
  Maintaining patient records and databases is important for any institution, the same goes for the healthcare industry. With proper patient data, medical care institutions can send them new offers, awareness messages, follow-ups, and check-up reminders, etc. It will increase the footfall of the patient and keep them engaged.
• Overseeing Outbound Missions:
  Many healthcare organizations arrange free camps and conduct different drives such as blood test camp or dental camp etc. for marketing purposes or to help the people. From these camps, they can get potential data and later can be used to retarget the patients to send them automated follow-up, offers, and reminders.

2. Patients:

• Making arrangements:
  Still, patients have to call the clinic to book appointments, wait in for long hours to meet doctors. This all can be simplified just by implementing a solution that can help patients to book appointments from home.
• Sending Cautions:
  Patients tend to forget the follow-up consultation date or regular checkup schedule. Hospitals can set up automated reminder systems to send reminders to patients for checkups and consultations.

3. Specialist co-ops (Diagnostic focuses and drug stores):

• CRM for Healthcare:
  Most drug stores don’t have a CRM combination set up or have one with restricted usefulness. This prompts losing the understanding of information and tracking the records.

Why Connect Doctor using Cloud Telephony?

Everybody’s time is significant, and a decent telephone system for healthcare institutions can help the organization to improve customer experience and increase the patient footfall.

Telemedicine Facility:

With pandemic affecting our lives, everything has become virtual and online. So the health care sector. Now, everyone is accessing healthcare facilities from home using telemedicine. Using *astTECS Cloud Telephony Solution, medical care institutions can easily set telemedicine for your patients to make their services accessible.

With telemedicine, patients and doctors can connect in real-time using video calls. Doctors can send prescriptions, payment details, reports, and follow-ups reminders. With IVR, doctors can receive the calls and see the patient’s information.

Even doctors can set up a pre questionnaire using IVR so that doctors have context on the patient’s query before attending the call. Even calls can be tracked, recorded, and analyzed for improving the operations.

Improve proficiency and decrease costs:

As you most likely are aware, Doctors’ workplaces are costly to run and are continually searching for approaches to reduce expenses.

For instance, you can improve effectiveness and decrease costs by up to 60% by implementing cloud solutions. Cloud telephony requires less setup and no infrastructure.

Access data and work from anywhere:

The receptionist doesn’t have to stick to a desk phone for receiving calls or making calls to the patients, cloud telephony gives the flexibility of using any device for calls. They can also configure their mobile number to receive calls from anywhere anytime to ensure no inquiries are missed.

Integrated approach For accessing Healthcare facilities:

Cloud telephony brings in an integrated technology into play. To explain, with cloud communication tools you can integrate different communication mediums to contact patients.

For example, you receive a call on your customer service number and the patient has booked an appointment with a doctor. This lead can be pushed to the CRM with all the details before the appointment patient will get a WhatsApp message saying “ Your appointment with the doctor is scheduled at this time”. Even a voice broadcast can also be triggered using smart IVR to ensure a patient is coming or not.

The Bottom Line – drive profitability and productivity:

Implementing a cloud telephony solution not only increases the patient’s footfall enhances the patient experience but also improves medical staff efficiency. The medical staff has access to better technology and data through which they can quickly work on manual follow-ups and reminders if required.

Even internal communication with the medical organization can be improved using advanced cloud solutions. Even the performance of front desk agents can be analyzed and tracked using voice recording, speech analytics, and reporting features.

The Incentives to this approach as a Healthcare.

Regardless of whether you are a medical care supplier, healthcare organization, or a drug store, you can profit enormously from these solutions.

Save lives by empowering quicker reactions

With cloud communication, giving basic assistance at the initial stage is easy, and faster.

Cloud Telephony is intended to quickly assemble clinical staff when they are required the most using the announcement system.

For instance, We should accept that a patient has been brought into the emergency wing. A specialist does a fast check and afterward calls the ERCC (Emergency Response Coordination Centre), referring to the patient’s case and area inside the premises.

The specialist’s message is recorded and afterward sent to different specialists, medical attendants, and staff individuals, through a voice call that replays the recorded message when replied, or using an SMS.

The staff individuals can reach the designated area listening to the announcement and the patient gets fast clinical consideration with no deferrals. Getting help when you call for it has never been simpler.

Data Management is easier:

Patients don’t have to rush to hospitals to collect reports and consultations. Labs can send reports to patients via email or message and doctors can follow up on the same using telemedicine solutions.

It makes it easier for hospitals to keep track and record the data using CRM for healthcare.

Make life simpler for patients

Patients can book appointments smoothly using the platform or automated chatbots specially customized for healthcare. Whatsapp integrated with the cloud solution helps patients to book appointments, do follow-ups, take consultation, and order medicines.

All you need is a compelling IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and chatbot to enhance the customer experience and delight them with service.

Target Patients Effectively:

Healthcare organizations regularly conduct camps and introduce new offers. They can send SMS, voice blasting, and automated messages to the patient database.

Conclusion

The Healthcare industry has started to recognize the potential of cloud telephony and telemedicine in India but still, it has a long way to go. Healthcare at your fingertips concept not only helps institutions to hike their revenues and makes medical services easily accessible for patients.

Have a question on the Cloud telephony solution? Contact us our VoIP experts for further discussion or  comment below with the queries