Airlie Women's Clinic

With about 50,000 patients on file, the Melbourne-based Airlie Women’s Clinic is one of the most successful medical practices in Victoria, Australia. The clinic is staffed by female general practitioners who have a particular interest in preventative care, women and family health issues and counseling. The practice, which treats up to 300 patients per day, is focused on providing high quality patient care: a service feature recognized nationally with the Airlie Women’s Clinic selected as one of Australia’s medical practice training facilities.

"If we had known how much ShoreTel was going to improve our operations, we would have installed it long before we needed a multi-location telephony system."

— Robert Szwarcberg, Director, Airlie Women's Clinic

A turning point in the success of Airlie Women’s Clinic followed a decision to open a second facility. While the additional clinic is located nearby, it was felt impractical to operate two separate telephony systems and pay a high price for POTS calls between the practices.

At the time Airlie Women’s Clinic employed three receptionists to handle up to 800 calls per day using a 10-line Commander traditional telephone service. The practice needed one communications system to work across the two practices to improve efficiency, and result in significant cost savings.

“Neither Panasonic nor Avaya could provide us with the benefits offered by ShoreTel. ShoreTel is essentially plug and play: simple to install, easy for staff to use, and it allows us to move or add additional phones at little cost. This was a particularly good benefit as we added another two handsets after the original installation. We basically did it ourselves and it only cost us the price of the additional handsets. ShoreTel also offered us the lowest total cost of owning and maintaining a telephone system over its projected life.” 
— Robert Szwarcberg, Director, Airlie Women's Clinic

Airlie Women’s Clinic management reviewed alternative systems prior to selecting ShoreTel, including a hybrid offering from Panasonic and an Avaya IP telephony system. After reviewing these options and working with telephony consultants, Flexnet, the clinic selected a ShoreTel UC system. The solution includes a ShoreTel 90 Voice Switch, 19 easy-to-use ShoreTel IP Phones, models IP265 with colour screens, seven cordless headsets as well as one ShoreTel Supervisor Call Manager license, one ShoreTel Operator Call Manager License and seven ShoreTel Agent Call Manager licenses. Also deployed were ten ShoreTel Personal Call Manager licenses.

Benefits include:

• Savings of 26 hours of work time in call management alone, allowing one receptionist to be reassigned to assist medical staff.
• Improved quality of service to patients with 75 percent of calls being answered within 30 seconds, and 90 percent within one minute.
• Brilliantly simple connectivity for medical staff via ShoreTel’s modern colour screen phones using timesaving one-touch buttons.
• Efficient call management for receptionists using ShoreTel Operator Call Manager with two PC monitors and hands free cordless headsets.

"Thanks to call management alone, ShoreTel is saving Airlie Women’s Clinic a minimum of 26 work hours per week; 75 percent of calls are answered within 30 seconds, and 90 percent of calls are answered within one minute."

— Robert Szwarcberg, Director, Airlie Women's Clinic