Northwest Health System Installs Voice-Based Emergency Notification System

PUGET SOUND, Wash. -- Franciscan Health System, a healthcare provider in the Pacific Northwest, has just awarded a contract to DialPro Northwest to install its internal emergency event notification (EEN) system at three hospitals and a community health center.

The system will allow the healthcare organization to notify its staff through broadcast messages sent by phone, email, pager, or text messaging of pending emergencies. The DialPro EEN can also act as a staffing tool to find a replacement staff in the event that an employee calls in sick.

Using the system, officials at Franciscan can record a message from any phone or computer terminal. The software sits on a dedicated server that is connected to both the phone network and the Internet. To activate an EEN broadcast, the organization uses a secure access number to gain entry to the system, which then records and sends the message to a pre-determined group of employees by whichever means they specified.

“We evaluated a number of options in selecting a company to design and install an emergency event notification system, and selected DialPro Northwest for a variety of reasons,” says Eileen Newton, disaster coordinator for Franciscan. “With the DialPro installation, we have the ability to control the method by which we contact our staff. Additionally, we have the flexibility to combine all modalities–email, telephone, cell phone, text messaging, and pagers–rather than being limited to just one option.”

“In today’s society, the ability to quickly contact staff in the event of an emergency is critical," says Dennis Tyler, president of DialPro, "and EEN systems offer all organizations, regardless of size or industry, an effective way to do so.”