BACKGROUND
MagnaCare is a family of physician-directed, managed health care organizations offering affordable, cost-effective services in New York and New Jersey. Its innovative programs, service offerings and extensive networks—including more than 50,000 providers—offers exceptional value in health care without sacrificing patient care or satisfaction.

Founded in 1990, MagnaCare has grown rapidly. With 225 employees and over one million customers, it has been recognized as the largest managed care network in the New York metropolitan area.

THE CHALLENGE
As an enterprise committed to patient satisfaction, MagnaCare works to respond quickly to customer claims, comments and questions—messages which are often urgent in nature and varied in type. “Voicemails, emails and faxes pour in,” said Meir Weinraub, system administrator for MagnaCare. “We manage thousands of messages every day to care for our clients.”

Like other organizations, message management involved calling the voicemail system several times a day to retrieve voice messages, sometimes replaying entire messages to obtain the elusive phone number at the end. When not tied to the phone, employees were walking to and from the fax machine to complete important transmissions.

Emails, of course, could be easily obtained and handled from the office desktop. However, when employees were traveling, accessibility to email depended on the convenience of a laptop and LAN line—not always handy connections to find in airports, taxis or various hotels.

In all, employees were spending substantial hours chasing down messages rather than concentrating efforts on resolving the matters within them. In other words, they were missing out on more profitable, business-critical functions.

Again, like other organizations, MagnaCare viewed the time-consuming messaging system as—to use a familiar term—“normal and customary charges” of doing business.

“We didn’t necessarily see the disjointed way of managing messages as a challenge,” explained Weinraub. “We didn’t know what we were missing.”

THE SOLUTION
Imagine visiting the dentist for a routine checkup and learning you’re doing things the hard way. You no longer need to brush, floss and swish mouthwash in an extended routine; you can do it all at once, in a fraction of the time. This was essentially the case for MagnaCare when Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP), a network infrastructure consulting and engineering company, introduced the health care organization to AVST CallXpress®, the largest independent provider in the global voice mail and unified messaging markets.

GTP enables information-driven corporations to achieve business objectives by optimizing the performance of their IT infrastructures. The firm proved a valuable partner in planning, designing and implementing CallXpress Unified Messaging within MagnaCare’s environment.

CallXpress Unified Messaging provides access to all messages—voice, fax and email—in one Inbox, and makes them easy to access from the telephone, mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), computer or Internet. As an open solution, CallXpress integrates with existing systems. At MagnaCare, it is used with Microsoft Outlook.

“Unified messaging has become a productivity-enhancer we could not live without,” Weinraub stated. “It is something we first viewed as a luxury that, in daily use, has become a necessity.”

More than 80 members of the MagnaCare staff now use CallXpress, with more being added continuously. Rather than tying up a phone line to listen to voice messages, desktop users automatically receive notification and listen to their voicemails directly through their email Inboxes.

The voice messages are simple to distinguish and store for future reference as a phone icon denotes them. Additionally, as .WAV attachments, the voicemails are easily reviewed (including abilities to speed up or slow down, start in the middle, etc.) and effortlessly forwarded to others via email.

Faxes at the desktop are handled in a similar fashion thanks to RightFax, the proven market leader in enterprise fax and e-document delivery solutions, as the unified messaging fax engine. Weinraub estimates some employees receive dozens of faxes daily. “Unified messaging has cut down on labor for employees who used to wear a path to the fax machine or wait for someone else to distribute the papers,” Weinraub said. “Now they can open, view and forward faxes right from the Outlook interface.”

As previously mentioned, simplified management of messages is not limited to desktop use.

“At first we viewed unified messaging as more of a desktop tool,” Weinraub recounted. “We liked the ability to centralize messages and save steps by listening to voicemails through Outlook®.” But if desktop capabilities were helpful treatments, dependable remote retrieval of important messages delivered the cure. Weinraub highlighted, “Users love the power of remote message retrieval.”

They use mobile phones to listen to emails and fax headers via CallXpress text-to-speech functionality. For quick response, the professionals may voice record a reply to an urgent email for delivery to the sender in a .WAV attachment. They can then electronically forward timely faxes, such as claims or customer requests; to a hotel fax number or other designated location—all without requiring the time of a busy office assistant.

“Getting into the remote capabilities of CallXpress opened a whole new horizon for us,” Weinraub said. “CallXpress enables us to be more responsive to messages, essentially to do our jobs with more efficiency.” In fact, Weinraub reports the company obtained a full return on its investment for CallXpress not long after installing the system.

RESULTS
Among the appreciated results of using unified messaging, Weinraub reports MagnaCare has cut the average time in responding to certain customer requests from five minutes to one minute. Also, employee use of email has risen by close to 35 percent. Increased functionality he attributes—in part—to the “improved communication vehicle” of CallXpress.

Easier remote access to messages has also boosted employee morale, Weinraub states. “When you’re away for a few days or just an evening, messages can pile up,” he said. “Instead of getting frustrated, CallXpress offers an easy way to check in and maintain control.”

On the whole, the benefits of CallXpress relate to the main goal of the customer-focused healthcare provider. ”With CallXpress Unified Messaging,” Weinraub summarized, “MagnaCare serves its customers more efficiently and effectively.” In practice, a healthy outlook for both MagnaCare and its patients.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
For 25 years, AVST has been shaping the evolution of communication, with more than 40,000 installations. Our award-winning CallXpress solution has been unifying communications for companies all over the world. So as the world of enterprise communications advances, you can be assured that AVST has your future covered. To learn more visit www.avst.com or contact us at +1.949.699.2300.

ABOUT GREENWICH TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP) enables Global 2000 financial services, insurance, pharmaceutical, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, and other information-driven corporations to achieve their business objectives by optimizing the performance of their IT infrastructures. GTP provides a unique combination of objective business analysis, project management, and technical expertise to address clients’ strategic needs. GTP applies best practice consulting skills to a broad range of technologies including systems and storage, internetworking, application and network performance management, security, and voice/data convergence. GTP was ranked ninth on the 2002 Inc 500 list of America's fastest growing private businesses. For additional information visit http://www.greenwichtech.com.