Capio Health Care Centre Västerås City

Capio Västerås City is a full-service health care centre which has combined all professional health care services for the whole family under one roof: health care centre, children’s health care centre, diabetes clinic, district nurses etc. Västerås City has 11,700 registered patients.

Capio Västerås City only has one contact phone number for the whole centre, which makes things easy for patients. Patients’ calls are answered by an interactive voice response menu where they select between different options: Health care clinic, Vaccination, Midwife clinic, Children’s health care centre, Physiotherapist or Social workers. These options then direct the patient to the various Aurora teleQ queues, each with their own schedule and messages. The patient can also opt to hear the menu in English or Chinese.

Healthcare to healthcare line

The health care centre is open for booking appointments and telephone advice between 8 am and 5 pm, while the voice mail service is open around the clock for cancellations and repeat prescriptions. It may also happen that other health care authorities, e.g. home help service, need to contact the health care centre. We have therefore established a separate phone number, the health care to health care line, for them to call, which directs them to a standard queue in Aurora teleQ answered by the same nurses responsible for calls from patients. The major advantage for the nurses is that all calls are collected in Aurora teleQ, and no other telephones are left to ring unanswered. The nurses can easily transfer ongoing calls to other Aurora teleQ queues, e.g. if an expectant mother actually needs to speak to the midwife clinic.

Cancel appointments around the clock

The midwife clinic also has a 24-hour cancellation function in its voice mail service. This ensures that cancellations are picked up in good time and new patients can book the appointments that have become available. The clinic is open for telephone advice for one hour each day, between 11 am and 12 noon, but patients can book a call-back time from as early as 8 am. If they ring after noon, they will be asked to phone back the following day. This example shows that each department can customise its own Aurora teleQ settings as required, so even regular patients use the same contact phone number. This provides good patient service while creating flexibility within the business.

“Aurora teleQ allows you full control over your own day, we see all these messages when we arrive every morning and can then easily organise the day. It is great that the patients can phone in regarding cancellations and prescriptions even when we are closed.”

– Eva Hallqvist, Head of Healthcare Centre

The challenge

Capio Health Care Center had a standard telephone queue. This meant that all patients that tried to phone them on Monday morning just had to sit and wait. There was no order to the system and everyone had to wait in the same queue regardless of why they were calling. Calls came in directly to the nurses’ phones, which is far from a positive working environment. It is also extremely stressful when you know that people are sat waiting in a queue, which makes it hard to get away from the phone. All of this is avoided with Aurora teleQ.

The solution

Eva Hallqvist, Head of Healthcare Centre, talks about how the Aurora teleQ solution works in practice: “On one hand, we have a health care to health care line that allows health care professionals to contact us on a private number. When someone call this number the nurses can see it in the call menu, and the call is given high priority and placed at the top of the list. If we are not based in front of a computer, it is possible to transfer the calls to a mobile phone. When our patients phone us, they have the option of waiting in a queue or requesting a call back. The advantage of having one contact phone number is that it allows us to manage calls and thus arrange the hours to suit our business. Another big advantage is that we can prioritise booking appointments and telephone advice.”

The result

Eva Hallqvist sees huge improvements since using Aurora teleQ. The nurses have a much better working environment, which is something she stresses heavily. It is now possible to spread the calls over the day and to categorise them.

Eva Hallqvist also mentions that she is seeing savings in working hours, as calls are now directed to the correct department and if a patient does end up speaking to the wrong department, administrators can easily transfer them to the correct queue.