The Client

Physiohealth is a physiotherapy health provider specializing in helping individuals from all walks of life get “athlete level” training and health-related services, from the most proactive and dynamic provider of physiotherapy and allied services in Melbourne today. With six locations around Melbourne, there customers include Olympic-level athletes, teams, elite sports people such as swimmers, soccer players, dancers and gymnasts, as well as leading sporting clubs. But they help quite a bit of the general public who want this level of service as well.

The Need

When they first came to HostUs in 2010, the practice had several locations, with plans to acquire more over the next decade. However, each practice was its own IT and phone entity, and nothing was centralized.

The company first wanted all IT functions centralized, with every office running the same practice management software, the ability to share information and files, and the company to function as a whole in an IT sense, with each office connected to each other.

If successful, the company was interested in then centralizing the phone system.

The Wish List

Physiohealth envisioned not just a centralized IT structure where each office was part of the greater whole, they also envisioned this solution being intuitive enough that it could be implemented into any new office quickly, and with minimal downtime or training. Was this possible?

The company also wanted backups to be done in a centralized manner, on a consistent, automatic basis. “Same versions” of productivity software – from their unique practice management software to common applications like MS Word – was paramount. The company envisioned anyone logging in from any office being instantly familiar with what they saw.

Being a health related company, this had to be very secure, with password level access.

Further, the company noticed that some locations were busier than others, meaning some office’s receptionists answered the phone all day, while other offices had a lot of downtime. When the time came to handle the phones, could the slower offices help the busier ones?

Our Service

Our hosted cloud server solution was ideal for the company’s needs. With the dedicated server in our data centers hosting the latest versions of their practice management (and other) software, the terminals in the company’s locations were all able to access the same familiar environment, with each location still being its own entity, but part of a greater whole.

Not only could data and information be easily shared, so could workload, with a slower location being able to assist a busier one remotely.

We also centralized the backups to be performed daily, from each location. And the server solution is fully scalable, and able to grow with the company – any additional locations are easily brought into the fold.

Once the preceding was up and running, we went to work and did the same for the phones. We incorporated our VoIP telephony service, and tied it together so locations would still remain separate, but with the ability for the software to reroute calls to free receptionists in other offices, complete with pertinent location information.

End Result

A company with many locations functions incredibly smoothly and efficiently as a whole. Everyone in every location sees the same environment, and both data and workload are fully capable of being shared.

Everyone has the latest version of all software, and backups are handled on a consistent basis, and kept securely offsite.

New locations have been acquired and brought up to full speed with little effort, and almost no downtime.

For the phone system, each location is fully monitored, with the central system able to route calls to another location if the location called is busy. The receptionist is alerted via computer screen that the call is for another location, so he or she can answer the phone properly. What this does is provide better service for customers (virtually eliminating the need for getting put on hold), and also ensures that workers with a little downtime can help those that are busy.

Further, we introduced a robust messaging system, so each practitioner had his or her own extension, and voicemail. The voicemail would automatically pick up if the practitioner was with a patient or otherwise busy, and the message was e-mailed to the practitioner (as well as retrievable via phone). This ensures all messages are received.

Cost savings were also realized. Before we incorporated the system, we realized that many outgoing calls were to cell numbers (their patient base skews young), which are more expensive. With VoIP, this cost is greatly lessened.

An Increase In Productivity

With the incoming call routing and sharing, as well as IT and computer functions able to be shared, slower offices could really pitch in and help busier offices, which led to an incredible increase in productivity, without having to hire a single additional person.