Wellingborough Medical Centre

Wellingborough Medical Centre is a well established, privately owned practice and is part of the Northamptonshire Heartlands PCT. Having expanded steadily over almost thirty years, including taking over a single-handed practice in 1996, it has grown to support today's patient list of almost 14,000 local residents.

For some time the Wellingborough premises supported these two primary practices; each sharing all of the services and supporting infrastructure of a modern medical centre. When one of the practices split to create two separate working units, a third, separate practice evolved at Gold Street. The new practice would provide healthcare services to the same patients but with different hours of opening and with its own staff and support team.

It became apparent that the technology, used since day one to adequately support two individual groups of doctors and nurses, would not be able to cater for three separate practices with their different working methods. Over the years the practice had invested in technology which had enabled them to become officially 'paperless' when consulting. This computing technology was not where the main problems arose. Difficulties existed at the very start of the patient doctor relationship - the telephone.

Mel Smith, Practice Manager for Wellingborough Medical Centre explained; "We had an old Meridian Norstar telephone system which was fine for our initial requirements. It provided a voicemail service for each of the two practices and they shared the telephone system like they shared the use of electricity. We then had to support three practices and, unless we invested heavily, we recognised that we would be unable to pass calls from the public to their 'new' practice at the times when it was open."

GPs in all three practices have to be available at defined times throughout the day. Two of the practices are open for telephone calls for 10 hours each day, with calls routed directly to the receptionists. The third practice chose to handle phone calls only during three distinct times of the working day and to provide automated means to the caller to route calls to the most suitable member of staff. It was the complex nature of these criteria which led Mel Smith to investigate a replacement telephone system.

Excell's offering of the Avaya IP Office 406 with standard digital handsets formed the foundation of the solution to the practice's problems. With its ability to perform as three virtual PBX switches in one unit, the immediate answer to Mel Smith's issues started to develop.

Call Handling was developed from a well structured spreadsheet, the call flow process had to be meticulously translated into a series of sophisticated call flows using the IP Office VoiceMail Pro application. This was a situation that would tax even the most conversant in IP Office but Excell rose to the challenge and, through characteristic dedication and persistence, the final configuration precisely met Mel Smith's requirements. A call recording solution was also implimented to ensure the safety of the Practice's staff.

Practices such as Wellingborough Medical Centre keep a careful eye on spending. With no exceptions, the Practice Manager has to check any expenditure is justified and that it will be a wise investment. Mel Smith assessed his previous quarterly phone bills, the number of lines coming into the practice and rental and lease costs to see where savings might be made. He was pleased to see that, after commissioning, with no additional expenditure, he had a far superior system and service.

In fact, because Excell recommended the use of Least Cost Routing and Carrier Pre Selection, it soon became clear that ongoing costs would actually be lower. In the long run, Mel Smith feels that the Avaya IP Office essentially "paid for itself with the savings made on call and line cost alone."

For more information about the services and solutions Excell can provide for Healthcare professionals, visit our dedicated Healthcare section. 

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