Palmetto Infusion Services
RingCentral Video and Contact Center help Palmetto Infusion Services cure its communication ailments
4x
INCREASE IN VIRTUAL TEAM MEETINGS, ALL HANDLED BY RINGCENTRAL VIDEO
#1
IT UPGRADE THE COMPANY CREDITS WITH “SAVING OUR BACON” DURING COVID
With RingCentral, we now have one app on our phones where we can do business calls, texts, faxes, video conferences, and team messaging—and it all syncs with the RingCentral app on our computers. It’s just incredible.
Garrett Bayer
Network Communications and Security Manager
A comforting treatment environment for chronically ill patients
When someone receives a life-changing diagnosis—an acute illness, an autoimmune disease—the recommended treatment often includes medication infusion therapy. Rather than receive these infusions in the cold, clinical setting of a hospital, many patients choose the more comforting environment of an ambulatory infusion center (AIC). One of the most successful AIC operators in the US is Palmetto Infusion Services.
Because their patients are typically suffering from chronic conditions, the team of experts at each Palmetto Infusion facility knows they can’t offer a cure. But what they can offer—what the company has been perfecting for more than 20 years—is a place for treatment that feels safe and comfortable, where patients and their care teams work together to create a path to wellness and an improved quality of life.
Palmetto Infusion’s pioneering work in establishing a welcoming treatment environment, offering many of the comforts of home, has helped the company grow exponentially. Today, in fact, the company is one of the country’s largest independent AIC operators—delivering care to 9,000 patients at more than 20 treatment locations across South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
When Palmetto Infusion’s IT team asked their longtime phone-system provider for help adding capacity to their existing telephony infrastructure, the owner’s recommendation served as a shot in the arm to find a more scalable solution.
INDUSTRY
Healthcare
HQ
Pawleys Island, SC
YEAR FOUNDED
1999
EMPLOYEES
350
Adding extensions to a legacy phone system was the wrong remedy
Palmetto Infusion’s patient-centric approach, and the safe treatment environment they offer, proved such a successful model that the company was opening an average of four new clinics a year to handle the increasing numbers of new patients in new regions.
Garrett Bayer, the company’s Network Communications and Security Manager, explains that growth pushed the company’s on-prem phone system to its limits. “We went back to the local company that sold us our telephony system and 150 extensions,” Garrett says. “The owner was honest with us and said, ‘I think you’ve outgrown your on-prem system. The way you’re growing and expanding geographically, you should move to a cloud communications solution.’”
Taking a holistic approach to improving business communications
When Garrett and his IT team evaluated the cloud-based solutions suggested by their phone-system reseller, RingCentral stood out.
“RingCentral was an all-inclusive platform,” he says. “It would help us solve our phone-service scalability challenges, yes, but at the same time it would allow us to roll out many other communication features our staff needed—like SMS texting, online faxing, video conferencing, and team messaging. And we could give them all of those tools in a single, user-friendly app.”
RingCentral Contact Center gives their customer service team a boost
When Garrett’s team rolled out RingCentral, Palmetto Infusion’s staff was thrilled with their newfound mobility and communication capabilities. The company’s registered nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and other care team members were now able to speak with patients or other providers using their business numbers no matter where they were. Receiving and reviewing patient fax data also became more convenient than ever.
Then Lisa Hohn, Palmetto Infusion’s Vice President of Patient Services, discovered a RingCentral solution for her customer support department that the company hadn’t even realized was available when they became a customer.
With RingCentral Contact Center, we were able to monitor how many agents we had handling calls at any given time, and how quickly they were answering those calls. The Quality Management tool also made it easy for our managers to monitor how well agents were performing and give them feedback.
Lisa Hohn
VP of Patient Services
Ready for a seamless transition during the lockdowns
Although it didn’t factor into their evaluations of cloud communications solutions, Palmetto Infusion’s IT team discovered the true extent of RingCentral’s mobility and flexibility in March 2020.
“Because our patients needed their treatments, our care teams kept the clinics open throughout the lockdowns—but we did send home most of our administrative teams,” Garrett explains.
“Thanks to RingCentral, that transition was basically seamless, because they had all the tools they needed to connect with each other, and our patients, from anywhere. Our virtual meetings went from 60 to 70 a month to 350 in April 2020—and RingCentral Video handled them all without any issues.”
Lisa notes that her customer service team had a similarly positive experience. “We were able to let our agents work from home using the RingCentral apps on their computers or their smartphones,” she says. “And our managers are still able to monitor all of those granular details—like time to answer, number of calls per agent, and their call performance rates—even though everyone was at home.”
She adds: “It was so great knowing that we could still provide outstanding service to our patients even during a time of so much uncertainty and confusion.”
We now have employees across dozens of locations in four states. But thanks to these RingCentral tools—especially RingCentral Video—we’re still able to be there for each other and keep a real team mentality.
Garrett Bayer
Network Communications and Security Manager