IPcelerate.com

Customer: Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA), Oklahoma

About the Customer

EMSA is Oklahoma’s largest provider of pre-hospital emergency medical care, providing ambulance service to more than 1.1 million residents in central and northeast Oklahoma. EMSA responds to more than 110,000 calls for help, and transports more than 70,000 patients by ambulance each year. In addition to its 911 and ambulance dispatching operations, EMSA also runs a Regional Trauma, Transfer and Referral Center, coordinating ambulatory transportation for severely injured patients coming into the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa from the rest of the state.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

The transition to VoIP for EMSA was based on financial and technological goals. The organization expected to enjoy a cost savings in telephony expenses, as well as long distance fees on calls made between their office locations. EMSA also wanted a telephony infrastructure that offered enhanced functionality and ability to manage calls in their billing department and 911 dispatch centers. Their initial expectations were easily met with a highly reliable and simplified VoIP phone system, as well as IPcelerate’s IPstudio recording solution for all VoIP calls.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

As a public safety business, EMSA is required by law to record all phone conversations coming into their 911 communication centers. While the organization already had a call recording solution for non-VoIP 911 calls and their radio system, they had no solution in place for their new VoIP lines. In addition to their 911 centers, EMSA needed a way to record calls handled through their Regional Trauma, Transfer and Referral Center and their billing department. EMSA receives approximately 4 requests a month for both written and audio documentation of specific calls in order to answer clinical questions or settle disputes. EMSA is the only entity recording calls, and so it was imperative they deploy an IP recording solution quickly. IPcelerate’s IPstudio recording platform was installed and automatic call recording for all VoIP calls was initiated.

IPcelerate Solutions

IPstudio’s recording scalability allows EMSA to record a high volume of calls processed through their 911 dispatch centers and billing department. The flexibility inherent in IPstudio offers EMSA the ability to automatically record all VoIP calls, which is required by law. This solution allows the organization to produce recordings on demand for all requests coming in from the medical community, law enforcement, legal entities and patients. Calls are recorded and reviewed to verify conversation details, answer clinical questions, ensure customer satisfaction and settle a variety of disputes.

New Telephony Experience

VoIP technology has created a new telephony environment for EMSA, one that is rich in features, offers simplicity to end-users and meets the needs for this critical emergency care organization. The ability to automatically record and retrieve recorded conversations directly through the IP telephony system has increased efficiencies for the organization, as well as improved response time to call recording requests.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

EMSA has already initiated next steps through the installation and monitoring of Status Solutions wireless temperature sensors in both data centers and their network center. These sensors monitor room temperature and then integrate with IPcelerate’s IPsession server to send out alerts when the temperature exceeds a predetermined limit. Alerts are sent out automatically to key personnel – to their IP phones, cell phones or desktop computers. This solution will help reduce technology costs and protect against critical data loss due to overheated equipment.

In addition to automatic temperature alerts, EMSA is aware of the many additional solutions already resident on both the IPsession and IPstudio servers, and would like to investigate these opportunities in the future.