Q1 Medical
RingCentral’s integrated cloud-based platform has ‘healed’ telephony at Q1 Medical’s network of suburban clinics, giving administrators full visibility of calls, and delivering a reliable and stable service with future potential to grow with the business. Integration with its AutoMed Systems patient management platform is delivering operational efficiencies and an enhanced experience for Q1 Medical employees and patients.
INDUSTRY
Health Services
HQ
Melbourne, Australia
YEAR FOUNDED
2012
EMPLOYEES
70
Managing up to 1200 inbound calls per week, across five medical centres
Handling complex call flows integrated with AutoMed Systems patient engagement solution
Reliable and stable UCaaS platform with capacity to scale with expected business growth
Adnan Hafeez
Operations Manager - Q1 Medical
q1medical.com
Q1 Medical currently operates five medical centres in the western suburbs of Melbourne, with a sixth centre
soon to open. The practice is committed to total family care and operates a mixed billing service providing
both private and bulk billing options at its clinics for eligible patients. Q1 Medical takes appointment
bookings over the phone augmented by AutoMed Systems for online bookings, helping patients find an
available doctor or preferred GP at their local clinic.
After deciding to migrate to a cloud-based phone system in 2022,
Q1 Medical suffered a catastrophic failure during the transition
from a legacy PABX system to its new cloud solution in October. The
cause was a lack of coordination between the two telephony service
providers, and it took them five days to fully restore services, causing
an estimated $50,000 in lost revenue across the five clinics.
After service restoration, Q1 Medical found that it was still missing
calls, causing staff and patient frustration, which also resulted in some
doctor attrition.
“The cloud telephony provider we were using failed to recognise the
extent of calls we were receiving and the complexity in the call flows
between our five centres. Every time something went wrong, they’d fix
it, but it would mess up another configuration somewhere else,” said
Adnan Hafeez, Operations Manager, Q1 Medical.
Unhappy with the ongoing reliability and support of its cloud
telephony solution, Q1 Medical contacted communications and
technology consultancy ICT Revolution for advice on alternate
solutions.
“The support we received from ICT Revolution was exceptional.
They realised how dire our situation was and assured us that they
would be standing by us until the problem was resolved,” said Hafeez.
Q1 Medical shortlisted three other unified communications-as-a-
service (UCaaS) platforms, including RingCentral MVP. While the
systems offered similar functionality, the differentiator was the
initial engagement from RingCentral’s Professional Services team,
explained Hafeez: “we discussed all the problems we’d been having
and what we wanted to achieve, and RingCentral’s engineers advised
us on what solutions to deploy and what work arounds would be
needed. The knowledge and support of RingCentral’s Professional
Services team was great.”
Q1 Medical also checked with AutoMed Systems (its reception,
back-office, and patient engagement solution) who confirmed that
they already had many clients successfully using an integrated API
connection with RingCentral.
RingCentral’s Professional Services team and ICT Revolution also
stood out during the design and deployment phases, with regular
project meetings between stakeholders, and task allocation and
timelines clearly laid out in the project plan.
“RingCentral kept us informed of any possible issues in advance, and
when things were going to take place. I’d give RingCentral 10 out of 10
for communication,” said Hafeez.
The MVP solution for voice and fax services was rolled out successfully
in March 2023, with Q1 Medical able to manage most changes and
fixes in-house, with RingCentral’s support services available if needed.
“I know that I have ICT Revolution and the whole RingCentral team
behind me if I can’t fix something. The saga we had with our phones
is finally over; now we can pay full attention to our own organisation
internally to improve our services to our staff, patients, and doctors,”
said Hafeez.
RingCentral’s integration with AutoMed Systems means that if an
existing patient calls, Q1 Medical reception and call centre staff are
automatically presented with all their details, including Medicare
and credit card details. That ensures appointments can be made
easily, any claims and gap payments can be processed quickly
and efficiently, and payments for telehealth consultations can be
collected without having to call the patients back.
Call flows have been designed to switch calls between each clinic,
and for two of the clinics to support each other to take incoming calls,
with call centre staff from a different location supporting Q1 Medical’s
busiest centre.
“Our customer service and patient satisfaction have significantly
improved. We don’t get any complaints about our phones or answering
calls anymore; now it’s just about how hard it is to find an available
time to book an appointment, which means our phone system is
working!” said Hafeez
While Q1 Medical now has visibility on call flows and activity across
the platform, the next steps will be to leverage the reporting and
analytics in the system to gain greater insights on call statistics and
caller behaviour. That way broader issues and efficiency opportunities
can be identified and addressed by the practice staff themselves. That
includes improving the time to answer and reducing the average call
handling time.
Hafeez is confident in his ability to deploy telephony to Q1 Medical’s
sixth centre when it opens, and to any more centres in the future: “we
know RingCentral will be providing us with pre-configured handsets
for our new site, so as far as assigning extensions, I can do that myself
through our admin portal. Then it’s a very simple process to connect
these new handsets through either WiFi or direct cable connection,
and our new phones are up and running.”
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