Piedmont Healthcare, one of Georgia's fastest-growing health systems, has begun deployment of the PerfectServe clinical communication and collaboration solution, replacing each practice's after hours answering service with an enterprise-wide, standardized communication platform. These physician locations include close to 100 primary care, heart and other specialty services supporting Piedmont's 11 hospitals, serving nearly two million patients.

In addition to the consolidation and standardization of after-hours services, Piedmont's physicians use the platform to consult with each other using a mobile application for secure voice and text that supports both personal and hospital-provided devices.

"Piedmont Healthcare has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, serving more and more communities across Georgia," said Ryan Bowcut, Executive Director of Operations, Piedmont Healthcare. "Our partnership with PerfectServe supports this growth by uniting our physicians on a single CC&C platform. The technology is improving clinical response time, ensuring HIPAA-compliant communications, and achieving substantial cost savings by converting a variable expense to a lower, fixed cost." The phased deployment began in early 2018 and will include nearly 100 practice locations when completed later this year.

"Piedmont Healthcare chose PerfectServe's CC&C platform because of our proven ability to integrate and scale to the needs of large integrated networks," said Terry Edwards, President and CEO, PerfectServe. "Overcoming geographic and organizational boundaries with a cloud-based solution ensures that our partners can collaborate across the patient's entire healthcare ecosystem and succeed under evolving value-based care arrangements."

Physician Adoption a Deciding Factor
Since 2014 and prior to an enterprise partnership, one of Piedmont's busiest clinics, Piedmont Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, has relied on PerfectServe for voice and text messages. "We have seen a huge improvement in our communication processes," Bowcut said. "Before PerfectServe, nurses would call physicians' cell phones, but not know if they were contacting the right person – often in the middle of the night. We love how one phone number automatically routes calls and messages to the correct provider. Nurses call using PerfectServe without having to leave a callback number, which is a tremendous improvement. We also don't have a character restriction on messages. In the past, they would have had to type 'Need to talk about labs' and wait for a callback, rather than just sending the needed information all at once."

Piedmont Named a Luminary Client
Piedmont Healthcare also joined PerfectServe's Luminary Client Program. Luminary sites represent strategic alliances for the CC&C technology company to inspire strategy and innovation. Participation in the program is congruent with Piedmont's reputation for creating long-term relationships and strong community connections.