St. Elizabeth Emergency Staff Enable Direct Physician Contact

November 2006

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For emergency physician Dr. John C. Sherman at St. Elizabeth Medical Center (SEMC), the minutes he spends waiting to get in touch with other physicians — either holding in answering service phone queues, or being interrupted in the middle of an exam by the inevitable call-back — are painful. Because those are minutes he cannot spend assisting other patients.

Which is why Dr. Sherman is so adamant about other SEMC physicians using PerfectServe in one of the “best practice” modes — where contact results in either a direct, real-time connection to a cell phone, or a voice message which follows a failsafe notification process.

“If the physician I’m trying to reach is using PerfectServe to its maximum potential, I can convey the necessary information in 30 seconds,” Dr. Sherman said. “Otherwise, I have to ask the department secretary to call the answering service to call the physician and then wait for the physician to call me back. All of which takes five minutes in my dreams, but in reality 20 minutes or more.

“PerfectServe is incredibly useful. It’s a significant timesaver — the ideal way to exchange information and reach colleagues,” Dr. Sherman said.

PerfectServe, Inc. provides physician contact and patient care communication services to hospitals, physician practices and other healthcare clients in more than 130 markets across the nation.

Independent research has found that the PerfectServe platform provides medical professionals with unprecedented accuracy, reliability and personal control over their patient care communication processes. At present, PerfectServe facilitates tens of thousands of interactions each day between hospitals, physicians and more than 12 million patients across the U.S. For more information, visit www.perfectserve.com.