Munson Healthcare: Getting a Provider Network Connected in Rural Michigan

By: Jessica Levco

NOTE: This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Healthcare Contact Center Times.

For healthcare providers in rural areas, reliable communication can be a matter of life and death. But spotty cell service and unreliable WiFi networks often persist in these communities, creating significant challenges for hospitals and clinics trying to coordinate care between physicians.

Munson Healthcare recently tackled this issue head-on by implementing a new clinical communication and collaboration platform. The health system, which serves a widespread rural population across northern Michigan, made the switch after struggling for years with an outdated paging system that left staff uncertain whether critical messages were being received.

The health system’s previous setup relied on a patchwork of legacy paging products that were cobbled together over two decades as various companies merged and acquired one another. As a result, Munson Healthcare was left with an unreliable system that couldn’t handle mass communications or integrate well with its EMR. Perhaps most concerning was the lack of confirmation when messages were received by physicians.

After an extensive RFP process involving six vendors, Munson Healthcare selected PerfectServe as their new clinical communication partner. The platform offers several key features to address the challenges of Munson Healthcare’s rural environment:

• Two-way communication with read receipts: Unlike the old one-way paging system, PerfectServe allows for back-and-forth messaging between providers. “If I send you a message, I know when you got it,” says Jim Keller, system director at Munson Healthcare. “This helps staff quickly determine if an important message has been received.” The two-way communication has been especially well-received by the doctors. “The doctor can be in a meeting and respond to the message without leaving,” Keller says. “They can respond and say, ‘I’ll call you back in five minutes’ or ‘here’s an answer to your question.'”
• Smart escalation: If an urgent message goes unread, the system automatically escalates through other communication channels. “If I send you an urgent message and you don’t read it in the app, it will send you an SMS text message within five minutes,” Keller says. “Then, it will wait one more minute. If you still haven’t acknowledged the message in the app, it will call you and say there’s a message waiting for you.”
• Desktop application: For staff working at computer workstations, a desktop version of the app provides another avenue for communication. “If I don’t have a smart device or if I’m a nurse and I’m working at a workstation and I want to send a message to a provider, I can continue to work in the EMR and use the application on the desktop to communicate,” Keller says.
• Integration with HR and credentialing systems: The new platform pulls in up-to-date staff information from Munson Healthcare’s HR and physician credentialing databases. This helps eliminate manual data entry errors that previously caused communication breakdowns.
• Improved mass communication capabilities: The new system allows Munson Healthcare to quickly disseminate information to thousands of providers across their network. “We have our own practices, but we also have non-owned practices that provide services for us,” Keller says.

Another major piece of this rollout was the implementation of PerfectServe’s Operator Console solution, which has enhanced the health system’s call center capabilities. The main switchboard teams cover five of Munson Healthcare’s hospital locations, so they handle a lot of inbound communication traffic each day. Compared to the prior vendor’s platform, Operator Console provides better search capabilities, more robust messaging functionality, and easier queue management.

“Replacing the legacy call center technology with PerfectServe’s Operator Console has been a game-changer for our agents’ workflow,” Keller says. “The quick action buttons for accessing codes; the ability to quickly transfer or hand off calls; and the prioritized queue system have all contributed to a more efficient and reliable communication setup.”

The queues are assigned different priority levels—a code call gets prioritized over a non-urgent call from an outside physician, for example. Codes can be accessed with quick action buttons, which promote efficiency by allowing critical communications to be initiated with a single click.

By seamlessly uploading historical data from their previous system, PerfectServe was also able to ensure that important institutional information was preserved during the Operator Console deployment. This allowed Munson Healthcare’s agents to continue operating smoothly without losing valuable insights about things like physician availability and work hours.