Emergency Medicine

Emergency Medicine Consultants — whose mission is to support physicians and physician staffing of hospital emergency departments and outpatient clinics — is a rapidly growing organization, with headquarters in Fort Worth, serving communities in North Texas.

Prior to adopting WebEx WebOffice, there was no easy way to centralize communications, share organizational and clinical information, and create a sense of unity for the organization whose physicians were based out of home offices over a wide geographical area.

Emergency Medicine Consultants had been faxing out to the 100 physicians in their group the scheduling changes for coverage of the 13 hospital ERs they serve. “Every time there was a revision to the schedule, we’d fax another copy of the schedule to everyone’s home. Probably at least once a week, we used to fax them out and that was both time consuming and costly,” says Dr. Luis Saldana, Communications Director for Emergency Medicine Consultants.

WebEx WebOffice provides a cost-effective online communications platform and central repository for sharing information and schedules, and for disseminating and discussing the latest medical information, procedures and protocols, from anywhere, at anytime.

“WebEx WebOffice is an easy way to centralize our internal communication and knowledge management,” says Dr. Saldana. “The WebEx WebOffice Online Calendar, Document Manager, Announcements and Opinion Polls help give us a sense of unity. And I really feel we have only scratched the surface of the capabilities WebEx WebOffice can provide our organization.”

"We’ve saved time and money because of WebEx WebOffice. We have not had to add more administrative staff as we’ve grown."

- Dr. Luis Saldana, Communications Director, Emergency Medicine Consultants

WebEx WebOffice has saved both time and money for Emergency Medicine Consultants. “By using WebEx WebOffice, we’ve reduced our cost because we no longer need to fax copies of the schedule to all the physicians,” says Dr. Saldana.

“Because of WebEx WebOffice, we have not had to add more administrative staff as we’ve grown. WebEx WebOffice allows the staff we have at our central office in Forth Worth to be more efficient.”

The WebOffice Online Calendar has provided a level of convenience that was not possible before. “By using the Online Calendar for sharing all of our schedules for the different hospitals, anyone of us can quickly see who is working where. If you are out of town, you can quickly check your schedule online,” Dr. Saldana says.

Emergency Medicine Consultants uses the WebOffice Document Manager to post and share guidelines, protocols, memos, and so on, relevant to each of the 13 hospitals. If a doctor is on site at a particular hospital ER and needs to reference literature pertinent to that hospital, he or she can quickly check that literature on WebOffice.

While WebOffice provides several convenient ways to notify members about news items of common interest, Dr. Saldana prefers to use WebOffice Opinion Polls to disseminate the latest medical news and information to all Emergency Medicine Consultants’ physicians, because he feels that method stimulates the most discussion.

“I use WebOffice Opinion Polls at least once a month to send the doctors the latest medical literature, protocols, guidelines, information on drug recalls, health advisories, and so on. In particular, I share information about health matters where there’s controversy over how people do things. Polling is real time and tends to stimulate discussion. By using Opinion Polls this way, I get everyone’s opinion. Everybody likes that.”

“I’ll send out a poll that asks: ‘What do you do in “X” situation?’ Maybe I’m doing something different than everyone else; this is a way for me to find out. Using WebOffice Opinion Polls gets everybody on the same page. It’s a way to get an idea out, and it helps everyone in the organization see what other doctors are doing.”

Emergency Medicine Consultants serves both large and small hospitals, and gives the doctors in smaller hospitals the sense that they are practicing the same medicine as the doctors in the larger hospitals. “WebEx WebOffice allows us to provide the physicians some infrastructure and information they might not otherwise have.”

For news items not likely to generate controversy, Emergency Medicine Consultants uses WebOffice Announcements — posting items to the WebOffice home page. “We use Announcements at least once a week for notification about upcoming meetings, or medical education events. We also make announcements about birthdays, charity golf tournaments, and such.”

“WebEx WebOffice has made a big difference to our organization in terms of cost savings and convenience, and in improving our communications,” Dr. Saldana concluded.