Flexible VoIP Telephone Systems for Business

Telecom Matters Corp. installed an Asterisk system at a hospice organization. This organization has over 300 field medical, social worker, and chaplain staff, and the Asterisk IVR system collects information about patient visits from this staff.

The system has interfaces with two database servers. A pre-existing Sybase database contains the patient and employee information while a new MySQL server maintains the data collected via IVR. The PBX has a T1 interface with the PSTN.

Prior to a visit, the staffer will call the IVR and record the beginning of the visit. At the conclusion of the visit, the staffer will again call the PBX and record the end of the visit. In addition to visit time-keeping, the system will collect information about the time spent charting and the time spent in travel. The system also collects information about what services were provided to the patient.

The PBX allows a staffer to leave a "team" voice-mail specific to an individual patient. The team voice-mail is dropped into the mailboxes of each of the patient's team members. Also, an e-mail is sent to each team member notifying them of the voice-mail (the patient's name and ID is included in the email subject).

The system also allows field staff to make telephone calls from the IVR menu. The data collection mechanism records the caller, called number, patient ID, and time and length of call. Optionally, the call can be recorded and saved in the patient's record.

We also developed an internal web site so that hospice staff could update the collected information and generate weekly activity reports.

Telecom Matters Corp. also installed a Linux server that manages the encrypted database for the company's imaging system. This server records images of hard copy patient records as well as information collected by the Asterisk server. The system uses the Samba software to provide an interface for the Windows client systems.