What should be considered when purchasing a phone system for a medical practice?

Aside from hiring an IT consultant, what consideration should be given, what steps should be taken and what questions should be asked of IT consultants and phone system vendors before buying their products?

Topics

Medical Practice

PBX

Phone System

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Jack Maher

asked on June 23, 2011

daria lewis

Sales/Marketing, Ted Woods, LLC/Ted the Telephone Guy

Posted on July 27, 2011

You need a telecommunications consultant instead of or in addition to an IT consultant. They need to work together to make sure that both your telecommunications needs and your data needs are met. These are very different specialties. Would you go to a cardiologist for a gynecological problem?

A Medical practice's telecommunications equipment must comply with HIPAA requirements. Additionally, depending upon where you are located, you may have E-911 compliance issues. While virtually all phone system vendors will tell you that they can comply, how they comply is important--and compliance can be very costly! A telecommunications consultant will be able to help you sort out the apples and the oranges.

Depending upon your location, there may be issues with carrier services that are actually available to you. If a system is designed for SIP trunks and they are not available in your area, you have a problem. Check out the costs and availability of even "old" technologies. Not all areas have services available that you just sort of expect to be there. FIOS is "never" going to be available in our area. For that matter, I've been on the list for DSL for 12 years--it still is not available at my house! I'm not out in the woods--I'm 70 miles or so from Boston!

A telecom consultant can work with you to determine what phone system(s) would best fit the way that you do business and determine the best mix of features and functionality to see that your phone system is a tool for your employees, rather than forcing your employees to change the way they work to meet the limitations of the phone system. In addition to "compliance issues," you may have practical issues specific to a medical practice. Do you intend to have calls answered live or can your patients use an auto-attendant? How do you keep urgent medical issues out of "voice mail jail?" Is it easy for your employees to transfer lines to your "answering service" when they need to? Do you have specialized hospital hotlines? Do you have multiple locations? There are lots and lots of questions. A telecom consultant will save you a lot of money because the consultant can see that you make the right choices with a minimum of disruption.