New "cures" for ailing communications

The benefits of voice processing technologies applied "one piece at a time" in the proper fashion can provide four "cures" to communications problems: The image of the healthcare facility in the eyes of the public will improve because calls are handled more quickly, efficiently, and professionally than before. Providing faster patient care information and eliminating delays in medical staff and personnel communications creates the opportunity to give better patient care and customer service. Elimination of time wasting "telephone tag" and "memo blizzards" will result in an increase in employee productivity. Personnel can be reassigned to more productive tasks. The net effect of voice processing on the healthcare industry is a continued merging of computers and telephones, resulting in a voice capability system which includes the telephone system, the call processing system, the voice messaging system, the voice response system, and the host computer system, all being accessed by the same terminal. Just the basic plain-vanilla touchtone telephone will handle it all.