Maternal and Family Health Services communicates seamlessly with Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams
Maternal and Family Health Services (MFHS) believes everyone deserves access to quality health care. For instance, when a mother has a question about caring for her newborn, she needs to easily connect with a healthcare professional who can provide the experienced guidance and empathetic support that she needs.
"The core of our mission is we care," said Shannon Hayward, Chief Operations Officer at Maternal and Family Health Services. "We deliver essential programs that help women, children and families have access to high quality healthcare, and a variety of services that help promote healthy growth and development of children."
Founded in 1971, MFHS is a nonprofit health and human services organization. It oversees and supports a network of 29 health and nutrition centers across 17 counties in Eastern Pennsylvania, serving over 90,000 women, men and children annually.
To deliver services quickly and effectively, it's essential that MFHS administrators, staff and clinicians can easily communicate, said Bernie Montigney, Director of Information Technology at Maternal and Family Health Services.
"Connectivity is huge. We have a ton of our clients reaching out to us on a regular basis to schedule appointments and to talk with nurses. This is especially true in our maternity department. They have to make sure that they're constantly available in case an emergency call arises from one of the maternity clients."
But aging technology and a jumble of disparate devices made it difficult for the team at MFHS to communicate effectively with patients, and with each other.
Legacy technology disrupts collaboration at MFHS
Maternal and Family Health Services was struggling with a legacy phone system. Designed for the pre-mobile era, it didn't meet modern communication requirements. Eric Koob, Associate Director of Product Management at Verizon Business, explained: "The employees at MFHS had a mix of devices. Some users had desk phones, others had mobile devices, and it was just kind of a mishmash of different types of endpoints."
This convoluted phone setup made it difficult for staff to reach one another. A single employee could have up to three different physical phones, each designated for a specific location—and each with its own voicemail box. Urgent calls could easily fall through the cracks, leaving colleagues or even patients concerned about whether their message was received.
As if these communication challenges weren't concerning enough, the aging phone system was also putting a sizable dent in the MFHS budget. "Our legacy phone system was outdated and had reached end of life. The cost of upgrading it would probably not have been worth it," said Arden Soriano, IT Analyst at Maternal and Family Health Services.
"Those maintenance costs kept rising, and the total cost we were looking at to replace all that legacy equipment was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Montigney added.
Faced with limited viable options, MFHS asked Verizon for an alternative solution.
We are able to contact our clients, our patients and participants if they're out in the field or if we're here in the office. Communication has been fluid."
Arden Soriano, IT Analyst, Maternal and Family Health Services
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Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams unifies communications
Like many organizations, MFHS began using Microsoft Teams at the beginning of the pandemic, so MFHS employees were familiar with features like team video calls and chat. MFHS also had 100 Verizon devices deployed, with more requested. Verizon proposed a mobile-first solution. Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams (VMMT) would integrate external calling into the existing MFHS Teams environment.
With VMMT, each MFHS employee is reachable via one mobile phone number running on the Verizon 4G/5G voice network. This single number simplicity was a game changer. Now everyone in the organization can communicate via Teams wherever they are, whether that's in the new Scranton location, visiting Northeastern Pennsylvania as part of the mobile Women, Infants and Children (WIC) unit or paying a visit to a new mother on behalf of the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) program.
Once MFHS decided to move forward with VMMT, implementation went fast.
"So now you take our best-in-class wireless network and connect it to Microsoft Teams, and you add calling to a solution they already know how to manage," said Henry Mues, Microsoft Teams Specialist at Verizon. Montigney added, "We got on a call with Henry. He basically shared our screen and walked us through how to set up a site, step by step. We were able to implement a simple location within 10 to 15 minutes from start to finish."
Verizon was the first operator to offer Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile in the United States. MFHS benefited from early access to a completely unified communications and mobile-first calling solution, running on a best-in-class nationwide wireless network. And with quick access to new features, MFHS can stay up to date on the latest collaboration and communication technology.
Connectivity is huge… Our staff has to make sure that they’re constantly available in case an emergency call arises from one of the maternity clients.”
Bernie Montigney, Director of Information Technology, Maternal and Family Health Services
Better collaboration enables the MFHS mission
VMMT helped eliminate the complexity and confusion MFHS employees once experienced with the old fragmented phone system. Now, instead of worrying about whether calls are slipping through the cracks, everyone at MFHS is connected. Team members can collaborate whether they are in the office or on-the-go, a crucial benefit for traveling healthcare workers and the mobile WIC unit.
"We are able to contact our clients, our patients and participants if they're out in the field or if we're here in the office. Communication has been fluid," Soriano said. For staff, "just being able to make and receive calls from their laptops has been a major benefit," he added.
With a single phone number for each employee, staff can now simply search for a colleague's name instead of trying multiple numbers and hoping for the best. "After I showed them that they could just type in a name at another location and get a call over to them, they've been loving the idea of not having to call an extension or a specific number," Soriano said.
MFHS now leverages the speed, scale and reliability that comes with the Verizon mobile network.
Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams is built into the Verizon wireless network core. If there is a service disruption, we're able to route those calls as regular wireless calls.”
Eric Koob, Associate Director of Product Management, Verizon Business
"You can go to sleep at night knowing that if something happens, your users are still able to make and take calls, especially in an emergency," Mues confirmed.
VMMT also allowed MFHS to transition from an inflexible and costly legacy phone system. MFHS noted that switching to Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams saved them a lot of money. The healthcare provider eliminated the costs of hardware, duplicate phone numbers, licenses, maintenance and support contracts associated with the old phone system, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because VMMT runs on the Verizon 4G/5G wireless network, MFHS also saw cost savings associated with wireless calling. When a Verizon wireless subscriber calls another, that call is free of charge. This means that calls between MFHS employees, or to other Verizon subscribers, no longer sap the nonprofit's operating budget.
With direct communication resolved, MFHS employees can turn their attention to what matters most: working together to deliver quality care to women, children and families in Pennsylvania.
So now you take our best-in-class wireless network and connect it to Microsoft Teams, and you add calling to a solution they already know how to manage.”
Henry Mues, Microsoft Teams Specialist Verizon
A strong technology partnership delivers quality care
Partnering with Verizon on the Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams solution has created new opportunities for Maternal and Family Health Services.
"Our partnership with Verizon has been great, particularly as we have grown. It has allowed us to adapt and be flexible as we identified new needs and new solutions," said Hayward. With legacy phone system challenges out of the way and a strong technology partnership in place, MFHS can focus on its core mission of delivering quality care to the families of Northeastern Pennsylvania.