NHS Directhas installed avoice over
IP-based communications system to improve
efficiency and help it meet Department of Health targets for
responding to patient calls.
The health advice service, which receives 6,000,000 calls a
year, completed the two-year IT project to support the
centralisation of its call centres last month.
Murray Bain, IT director at NHS Direct, said that previously the
organisation had difficulty dealing with the volume of calls from
patients, as calls were serviced from 22 different sites.
The centralised approach has allowed NHS Direct to balance call
volume across the sites more efficiently, leading to an improvement
in the quality of the service.
The project required the installation of 2,000 VoIP handsets and
virtual call centre technology, as well as the implementation of
the NHS's N3 network across 22 sites.
Based on network switches from
Nortel and Nortel's Automated Call Distribution technology, the
VoIP implementation uses business rules to route patient calls to
the next available call centre agent.
Five technical hubs in Newcastle, Nottingham, Beckenham, Milton
Keynes and Dudley have been equipped with Nortel Communication
Servers and the Nortel Contact Center platform. Fifteen smaller
sites run from these hubs.
Over the next six months, Bain plans to enhance the service by
using computer/telephony integration to link caller ID information
to NHS Direct's database of patients. This would enable agents to
see a pop-up screen of patient details whenever they take a
call.
NHS Direct is also working on closer links between its website
and its call centre, which would allow patients using the website
to speak to call centre agents.