Winn Army Community Hospital
An intelligent communications solution by Avaya and Interactive Northwest
Winn Army Community Hospital (WACH) is located at Fort Stewart, Ga., and opened in 1983. The four-
story facility was named after Brigadier General Dean F. Winn, a U.S. Army Medical Corps Orthopedic
surgeon whose career spanned the years from 1914 to 1948. Winn commanded four Army hospitals
during his distinctive career. For more information, visit www.winn.amedd.army.mil.
Challenge
WACH wanted to improve the communication services delivered to soldiers, retirees and their
families. The hospital had been using an older self-service Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform.
Callers had difficulty distinguishing which department or location they needed for services, resulting
in additional manpower needs of the hospital staff. The hospital was also looking for efficiencies in
providing information to callers and call center staff. In addition, WACH was seeking automated call
routing capabilities to connect patients to the right organization in the shortest time and with the least
amount of effort; better responsiveness to messages by implementing an application that automatically
returns calls at the appropriate time; enhanced automated access to information by providing an
enhanced lab test results application; and shortened call durations and improve patient satisfaction by
implementing “screen pops” of the Patient Record screens.
Solution
The converged solution implemented at WACH to address its business challenges combined Avaya
Interactive Response, Application Enablement Services (AES) and Dialog Designer with INI’s self-
service solutions, including INI SureConnect™, INI CTInsight™ and Lab Test Results applications.
INI SureConnect™ application provides callers the option of scheduling a callback rather than
remaining on hold, providing efficiencies for the call center and convenience for callers. INI CTInsight™
application retrieves and routes records from the hospital database and delivers them to the call
center agent’s screen along with the call. INI Lab Test Results application delivers results quickly, 24/7,
ensures privacy, and reduces the need for staff assistance to provide results.
Results
Shorter hold times. ▶Patients calling to make an appointment at the hospital or one of its clinics no
longer have to remain on hold to keep their place in queue if the department they need to reach is
busy. They can schedule a callback – either as soon as someone is available or at a specific time of
day – without losing their place in line. Their call is handled in the same order it would have been had
they remained on the phone.
Providing faster, more efficient call handling and access to information for patients and operators ▶.
WACH is expanding its use of its Avaya Interactive Response system to deliver lab test results quickly
and securely. Patients simply call in at their convenience, enter a personal lab ID number and have
their test results read to them via text-to-speech technology. For those callers who need operator
assistance, patient information is delivered to the operator’s PC screen along with the call. Avaya
contact center applications integrated with INI’s CTInsight™ application retrieve and route records
from the hospital database. As a result, calls can be handled more promptly and patients don’t have
to repeat information.
Using technology to improve customer service. ▶ For quality control and staff training purposes,
the hospital is now able to record calls and examine how well the calls are handled. That means
improvements can be made over time in the service the hospital delivers. The new capability is
based on IP telephony call recording software from Witness Actionable Solutions, a division of Verint
Systems Inc.
Connecting calls to the right department. ▶ The INI applications used by the hospital employ the latest
speech recognition technology from Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) to enable callers to
use natural language commands to connect to the right department or clinic. As the application is
fine-tuned for local speech patterns, it can ask simple questions and interact with Avaya IP telephony
software to route calls based on the answers provided. If the system doesn’t understand a response,
it simply asks questions in order to clarify. Callers don’t have to wait for an operator, and no human
intervention is required.