MedQuest Saves Hospitals and Patients Valuable Time Using WebDemo® Web Conferencing Software
The Situation:
MedQuest, LLC sells software that literally helps patients follow their doctors’ orders -- a serious issue that both hospitals and private practices face when patients don’t read, don’t comply with, or don’t understand the instructions they receive from their medical providers upon discharge.
In several cases, these instructions are verbal, handwritten, or misinterpreted by non-English speaking patients. The result? An increase in patient call-backs, return medical visits, and preventable malpractice lawsuits in hospital emergency departments.*
MedQuest’s customers range in size from stand-alone clinics to hospitals of 25 beds to 1,000 beds. Despite the difference in their patient load and IT budgets, these extremely busy healthcare practitioners all strive to deliver the best quality care and service. MedQuest’s ExitCare® software enables medical staff to improve patient care by simplifying and speeding up the entire patient discharge process, ultimately helping healthcare facilities keep costs down and improve efficiencies.
MedQuest’s customers were attracted to the simplicity of the ExitCare® program and its affordable price point. To keep the cost of its flagship product as low as possible, MedQuest sought other cost-effective alternatives to demonstrate its products and maintain relationships with its existing and prospective customer base.
In 2000, the company began distributing CDs that demonstrated how the product worked, but soon learned that prospective customers preferred more interactivity and access to MedQuest’s sales staff, as their schedules dictated. MedQuest’s President Roger Jacobi realized that by infusing real-time communications and customer-centric interactivity into a new breed of ExitCare® presentation and service tools, MedQuest would quickly become the leader in software for patient discharge instructions and education materials.
The Solution
MedQuest decided it needed one application software product to help it on three fronts: 1) to show prospects ExitCare® in action; 2) to provide its customers with limitless Web-based training and instantaneous technical support; and 3) to demonstrate to strategic business partners why MedQuest is the leading resource for quality patient discharge instructions.
To meet these different needs, MedQuest decided that a Web-based collaboration software tool would be its answer to save on third-party costs. President Jacobi knew that to keep software costs down for his smaller customers, MedQuest could not incur monthly overage fees for an application service provider (ASP) or unpredictably high per-minute charges. Additionally, MedQuest needed the ability to schedule meetings on-the-fly when its customers could spare the time, not just when time slots were open to them.
In order to extend MedQuest’s technical services, the company also wanted software to help technical support resolve issues as quickly as possible. To do so, the firm needed collaboration software that used standard Web-based connections to make immediate technical service a reality -- instead of relying on the IT staff of MedQuest’s clients to open special ports in advance to resolve simple issues.
After conducting a review of several Web collaboration software products available in 2004, MedQuest chose Linktivity’s WebDemo®, a server-based Web conferencing software product, for its feature set, simple interface, security features, flexible scheduling options, and cost-effective pricing.
WebDemo® is part of Linktivity’s line of browser-to-browser communications and remote control software. It’s an affordable way for small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprise organizations to connect and collaborate over the Web. Available as a server-based and integrated system solution, WebDemo® Web conferencing software allows users to easily present and share information and ideas in real-time over the Internet. Customers have used WebDemo® to meet a wide range of needs, including conferencing and collaboration, sales meetings, training, online technical support and remote control. WebDemo® provides users with optimal security, stability, scalability, and data confidentiality in all configurations.
The Results:
According to Chief Operating Officer Chuck Krejci, “WebDemo® is more than just an effective tool to close sales, it is the most valuable Web conferencing application software we’ve purchased from a sales and marketing point of view.” Using WebDemo ® helps MedQuest’s prospective customers get a real feel for MedQuest’s software in a way that a product demo CD can’t. “Once they see ExitCare® with their own eyes and can customize the live Web session to suit their needs, MedQuest’s customers quickly become advocates for the software within their hospital or medical institution. For many on the MedQuest sales team, it’s not uncommon to close about 80 percent of the deals that have included a WebDemo®. Another major plus is that s ales representatives in other states can easily remote in to MedQuest servers to set up and conduct conferencing sessions,” added Krejci.
Minnesota-based MedQuest also uses WebDemo® Web conferencing software to train its customers, resellers, and internal sales, marketing, and technical support teams regardless of location. Since there is no cost penalty for running additional training sessions, MedQuest can offer as many customer or internal trainings as it needs, whether it takes one to three hours or more.
From a technical services standpoint, MedQuest uses WebDemo® innovatively for "reverse access." This allows MedQuest’s IT staff to remotely access a client’s system, take control once given the access, troubleshoot, or do remote installs. The work is completed much faster because MedQuest’s IT staff can do the work directly, instead of guiding a customer’s tech specialist through each step.
But perhaps the most significant result is that WebDemo ® is enabling healthcare-focused software firms like MedQuest improve communication between physicians, nurses, and patients -- ultimately enriching patient care, minimizing human error, and potentially saving people’s lives.
* The second leading cause of preventable malpractice lawsuits in the emergency department of hospitals is directly related to poor patient discharge information, according to the St. Paul Companies, a large hospital malpractice carrier.
About Linktivity
Linktivity,
a technology leader in real-time communications software, provides server-based communications
and control products that enable person-to-person interactions through a browser window.
Linktivity products include WebDemo, a Web-based, real-time conferencing-and-collaboration
software tool, and WebInteractive, a real-time software tool that gives support and sales
professionals an efficient way to manage and resolve online requests for service and support.
The Linktivity technology and other select assets were acquired by Inter-Tel on October
8, 2004 and join Inter-Tel’s portfolio of business communication software and systems.
For more information, visit www.linktivity.com.
About Inter-Tel
Inter-Tel
(Nasdaq: INTL - news) offers value-driven communications products; applications utilizing networks
and server-based communications software; and a wide range of managed services that include voice
and data network design and traffic provisioning, custom application development, and financial
solutions packages. An industry-leading provider focused on the communication needs of business
enterprises, Inter-Tel employs over 1,900 communications professionals, and services business
customers through a network of approximately 57 company-owned, direct sales offices and over
350 authorized providers in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. More information is
available at www.inter-tel.com.
About MedicWare, Inc.
MedQuest's ExitCare® is a leading patient discharge information and
education system, used at all sizes of medical facilities across the country. ExitCare uses
colorful graphics and well-structured, age-appropriate and understandable language to present
complete, concise information and greatly improve patient compliance. Over 1,400 titles cover
Emergency Department, Urgent Care, OB/GYN, MedSurg, Ortho, Gastro, Peds, and several other
specialties to provide facility-wide applicability and a single, high standard of patient care.
ExitCare® includes multiple languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese
and Russian, with more languages on the way, as well as large type for visually impaired
patients. MedQuest also provides ExitMeds™, its popular prescription writing module,
including drug information for patients, as well as HL7 connectivity to existing information systems.