Woman's Hospital customer case study.

1. CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
COMMUNICATING DURING A STATEWIDE
CATASTROPHE – IS YOUR HOSPITAL
PREPARED?

2. 2
OVERVIEW
250 bed, not-for-profit hospital for women and infants
17th largest delivery service in the U.S.
2016 Guardian of Excellence Award (Press Ganey)
Top Performer on Key Quality Measures (Joint Commission)
Top 100 Best Places to Work (Modern Healthcare)

3. 3
OVERVIEW: CALL CENTER
With 15 FTEs, Woman’s Call Center:
• Answers hospital calls
• Initiates and responds to codes
• Processes calls for answering service
• Serves approximately 50 medical offices and 300 physicians

4. 4
2016 LOUISIANA FLOOD
“Worst U.S. disaster since
Hurricane Sandy, Red Cross says”
“Deadly slow-moving storm creates
record-level floods in Louisiana”
• Flooding began Aug. 11, 2016 and lasted several days
• Rainfall of 2-3 inches per hour was reported
• Thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed

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TIMELINE
Thursday, Aug. 11 Friday, Aug. 12
• Rain starts • Multiple team members unable to get to the hospital
• Physician offices began closing
• Landlines and cell service started to fail
• Unable to communicate with staff

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TIMELINE
Saturday, Aug. 13 Sunday, Aug. 14
• Hospital predicted 2-3 feet of water in main building
• Governor's office approves contract for aqua dam
• Louisiana National Guard arrives
• Guard installs aqua dam

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8. 8

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CHALLENGES
Unable to communicate with staff and physicians due to
sporadic, widespread phone outages
Staff unable to get to work
Increased call volume due to office closures and those trying to
contact the hospital
Water continuing to rise

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CHALLENGES
Unable to communicate with staff and physicians
11 cell towers for a
major provider were
down
Other carriers were
experiencing
intermittent issues or
were totally down
No way of knowing
whether text messages
were received because
of sporadic cell service
Telco central offices
were flooded and were
routed to other offices
(sometimes multiple
times)

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CHALLENGES
55%
2,000+ employees
25% had personal
property damage
10% reported a total loss
14% requested and received a
disaster leave of absence
Staff unable to get to work
Call center
staff impacted

13. 13
Phyllis’ street and home

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CHALLENGES
20,976 21,777
20,917
21,117
20,538
21,328 20,762
26,666
22,149 21,193
Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Woman's Hospital Call Volumes
2015 2016
Increased call volume

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CHALLENGES
Water continuing to rise

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SOLUTION EVALUATION PROCESS
To deliver information, we relied on:
Texting Internet and
social media
Emergency
hotline
• Communication options were a moving target
• Different for every person and carrier
“Go with the flow”

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SOLVING THE ISSUE
• Utilized Spok console for up-to-date
information on communication options
that were working
• Utilized on-call scheduling, web directory,
and Whereabouts as a communication tool
Spok Console Spok Mobile®
• Relied heavily on Spok Mobile
• Identified physicians not currently using
the product and added them

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SOLVING THE ISSUE
• Used Whereabouts to let operators know
what was happening at any given minute
• Relied on on-call scheduling and contact
center solutions as a backup
Spok Console Spok Mobile®
• Delivering messages quickly allowed staff
to answer more calls
• Relying on technology to inform us
whether a physician was receiving
messages helped us identify which carriers
were down

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SOLVING THE ISSUE
• Embedded phone number into the
message ticket in console
• Allowed the receiver of the Spok
Mobile message to simply press the
phone number to call

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EXAMPLE

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LESSONS LEARNED
Expect the unexpected!
Technology. Technology. Technology.
Have a plan and the space to execute that plan.
Get EVERYONE involved, not just call center staff and physicians.

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FUTURE
Improve communication with leadership
Expand Spok Mobile usage to include administrative team
Leverage eNotify as additional communication tool
Add additional solutions as they become available – more is more!

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LET’S GET IN TOUCH!
Learn more:
CASE STUDIES VIDEOS
We’d love to hear from you!
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getinfo@spok.com