“MPS is very professional, very responsive and a pleasure to do business with. Our call charges have been reduced and the system does everything we want it to. We have managed to achieve a larger system than we had in our previous practices, with more features and for a lower cost.”
The Four Shires Medical Centre shares a waiting area with The White House and Mange Cottage GP practices. Each had their own phone systems, but the practices realised they could streamline their systems.
After years in the making, the brand new £3.1million doctor’s surgery welcomed the first patients through the doors this month. The Four Shires Medical Centre, which has been built in front of the North Cotswold Hospital, in the Fosseway, Moreton on the Marsh. Catering for 9,000 patients in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, the building has a shared waiting area for the White House and Mann Cottage GP practices, which both have their own dispensaries. The new centre will house consultants for outreach clinics along with a community mental health team and has 44 car parking spaces with overflow space for patients and a coffee shop.
It was the responsibility of White House Practice Manager Angie Hope and Mann Cottage Practice Manager Jill Roper to organise the communications for the new facility. Angie Hope spoke to five different suppliers but felt MPS clearly understood their requirements, were knowledgeable and offered a competitive price for a multi- tenanted single phone system for the two practices.
Commenting on the decision to partner with MPS and share a single telephone system, Angie said, “Naturally we were apprehensive about sharing a phone system, but we need not have worried. MPS worked all day on the Saturday before we opened and were back again at 7.00am on opening day. They stayed with us until we were satisfied that everything was working.”
There were some issues during the installation where the ducts, through which the telephone lines were to be fed to the practice, were unusable and the telephone lines may not be ready in time for the opening. Both Angie and Gill began looking for a plan B but there was no furniture at the old premises. Fortunately they were able to contact the MPS Service Manager despite it being the weekend. He was able to leverage his contacts in BT, to persuade the on-site engineer to find an alternative solution. MPS saved the day for the practice managers by ensuring that the medical centre was able to open on schedule.
Commenting on the new system, both practice managers said that it was easy to use, with calls labelled according to which surgery or dispensary was being called. Asked to comment on the impact of the new phone system in the new facility Angie said, “We have managed to achieve a larger system than we had in our previous practices, with more features and for a lower cost.”
Angie went on to comment about their joint experience of partnering with MPS for their communications in saying, “MPS are very professional, very responsive and a pleasure to do business with. Our call charges have been reduced and the system does everything we want it to.”